‘The flattening’: tech sector calls time on middle managers
ft.com
ft.com
Now having two direct reports is absurd asking questions like how that was ever allowed and tolerated for as long as it was.
But I would also point this out. When upper management knows what in the hell they doing, a couple of middle managers can help tremendously. At HP's zenith, middle management was a strategic asset. They are too senior to get caught up in every team's day-to-day, and too close to the action to walk around with detached C-suite perspectives.
Composing the parts into an organized whole which requires tamping down sectionalism, getting specialists out of their backyard, and so on can be huge. Man, that's a tough ask. Holding that center is darn important.
So just like anything else, if you're talking Middle Management in the Drucker or Gerstner or Berkshire Hathaway sense, that's the real deal. If you're talking lower-case "middle management" that are glorified paper pushers and meeting mavens, cut like the dickens.
But no matter what, how is upper management getting away with spending that kind of shareholder cash on nonsense in the latter case? I am inclined to agree with another HN story circulating that the pendulum from competent but jerk has swung way too far to DEI nice-guy but total moron. Professionals are both: competent and personally accessible.
If all they are doing is managing those resources, I'd completely agree. I've seen a few examples of org structures where those folks aren't actually middle managers, but generally ICs with some additional responsibility. So they are still working hands on within a product, but also have some direct reports to help within their area of influence. If you're at a director level and you've only got two reports, honestly that doesn't seem that unreasonable either depending on their area of control and the size of the teams below their managers. I'd certainly rather see an org structure where managers are working with 2-7 direct reports (again assuming they are working managers and not just administrative overhead) rather than an org where someone has 20+ direct reports. There's no way a manager is effectively managing the expectations and goals and blockers of 20+ people with regular touch points while also being involved in the strategic direction of the company. Never mind where I see orgs with managers with over 50 direct reports.
My better half deals with management and a lot of cross functional management. The amount of junk she has to deal with due to politics, BS, people problems, and power struggles --- on premise data centers v. migration to the cloud is a major recurring theme because it involves a lot of people and budget ripe for power struggles --- is insane. Three or four proper Middle Managers could help *a lot*. I would point out, however, work at all levels esp. for middle management remains really hard if upper-management is clueless.
So yes, it can be perfectly reasonable to have 2 reports. Leading a project that needs about 3 people? You're the manager, and you have 2 direct reports. Managing a part of the organization where you've got 2 clearly distinct responsibilities beneath you? Promote a couple of your best employees to be team leads, manage them directly, everyone else reports to them and that opens up your time to do more strategic leadership focused on process, alignment with other parts of the business etc. You've done your succession planning, you've freed up your time to focus on more strategic issues, you've handled the personal development side of them job, and your structure is now set up so that if you want to grow the team you've got a clear way of doing it. Having these weird intuitions about how big a team should be over-ride creating the correct structure is just silly!
The second you start just looking at the shape of the org chart rather than reasons behind its structure you've basically just given up on engaging with management at all. But a lot of the problems with management at these companies stem from exactly that - people focused on building org charts rather than focusing on what the business actually needs, which is why you end up with endless bureaucracy - because management structure doesn't actually map to the business being done.
I see this all the time in my career - the idea you can do everything with some piece of the experience continuum eliminated - juniors, mid careers, seniors, etc. Then after 5 or so years they look around and realize their experience pipeline is broken in some way that breaks the org.
I've consulted for 7 F250s now, and I can tell you that grossly about half their management (and leadership) wouldn't be needed if they went to a more efficient delivery system. It's not uncommon for F250 leadership decisions to be driven by the human foibles of ego, politics, finger-pointing, anxiety, stress, at best mis-directed, at worst fraudulent incentives.
If lower level knowledge jobs can be eliminated by AI, it's just a matter of time before stockholders start demanding the same impact on management.
In the past, human workers executed processes designed by management. Today, computers execute processes designed by software engineers. In essence, software engineers today fill the role of yesterday's management, and the worker of yesterday is the computer of today.
If software creation becomes sufficiently more automated, then the worker role of the software engineer today will disappear. We will shift automation further up the organizational pyramid. The role of the manager, e.g. deciding what to do and where to allocate resources, will still exist, just that instead of directing the software engineer worker they will direct the AI.
The people most suited to that work are probably software engineers today. Whether this destroys the industry employment-wise depends on whether the new, shorter pyramid grows to fill a space at least as large as the old, taller pyramid. I don't really see why it wouldn't, since there seems to be much more demand for software today than there is supply, but it's hard to tell where things will land.
We can but hope.