Why are corporations cutting managers?
arnoldkling.substack.com
Why are corporations cutting managers?
1–10 of 63 posts
Re: Why are corporations cutting managers?
#2This is all over news but is this actually true. Meta is always citied as example because Mark said and did bunch of things to appease the markets.
There are no reduction in numbers at meta now. Middle managers have made a comeback at meta big time. CEOs love middle managers despite what they say to investors.
Even the numbers cited in the article are not convincing
> middle-manager head counts by about 6% since the peak of their pandemic hiring sprees
This actually indicates the opposite that middle managment is unusually resilient to layoffs
Re: Why are corporations cutting managers?
#3Corporations cut managers because they're expensive. Not having enough managers is also expensive though.
Re: Why are corporations cutting managers?
#4I find this article doesn't really say much of substance nor does it have hard facts to back it its claims related to the title. It really is just an observation piece - there are cuts and here are some very general theories without evidence. I didn't really gain much reading it.
Re: Why are corporations cutting managers?
#5Not terribly insightful. The question in the headline is not answered.
Re: Why are corporations cutting managers?
#6Not terribly insightful. The question in the headline is not answered.
Was it written by an AI?
Re: Why are corporations cutting managers?
#7This reads as if the required amount of management for different initiatives is constant, but it isn't.
One thing that happens is that when money is plentiful, there is a push to find new ways to generate returns. When money is tight, new bets look bad, and companies may cut new bets and work on optimizing their existing cash-cows.
Strictly, that says nothing about the number of managers needed, but I do think it's less management intensive to keep on with what you're already doing.
Re: Why are corporations cutting managers?
#8Corporations cut managers because they're expensive. Not having enough managers is also expensive though.
That part usually takes a couple quarters to show up though. :(
Re: Why are corporations cutting managers?
#9Corporations cut managers because they're expensive. Not having enough managers is also expensive though.
That part usually takes a couple quarters to show up though. :(
The organizational / social capital starts decreasing and then a few quarters later people see the costs of not having enough organizational capital. Boom/bust.
Re: Why are corporations cutting managers?
#10> U.S. public companies have cut their middle-manager head counts by about 6% since the peak of their pandemic hiring sprees
Haven't there been pretty big, well-known layoffs in other areas as well in the last couple years? Lots of engineers have gotten laid off, and the article also points out a 6% reduction in HR. Might it be that they're just laying everybody off across the board? I'd love it if this article considered management layoffs compared to the base rate of layoffs.
I'm a designer, and what I tell people is that you can't avoid having a designer on your team: if you don't have a dedicated designer, design is going to get done by everybody else. Probably by people who don't want to do it, aren't good at it, or may not even know they're doing it as they make unconsidered choices that shape your product forever. I think the same is probably true with managers. You hypothesize: ahh, managers are probably dead weight, let's get rid of them to save money. But then it turns out that all the individual contributors have to split the work the managers used to do. Or, more likely, your lead IC has to do it along with their main job. And in most cases they are not good at it, and do a poor job, and when it nets out you've got a less productive team. My manager quit a year ago, they didn't backfill for his position, and it's been an utter shitshow ever since.