The Great Flattening Experiment

By Russell Pearlman

March 26, 2025

For a few months in 2024, it looked like big US companies were trying to one-up each other in a game of who could get rid of the most middle managers. A giant tech company wiped out an entire management layer. Then an asset manager said it would cut 15 percent of its managers. Dozens of companies threw out similar percentages. The winner, however, might be the bank that said it would cut its 13 layers of management to eight.

A new reality is emerging in the modern workplace—one with far fewer supervisors. Over the last two years, organizations have been aggressively thinning out their management midsections. In 2024, middle managers represented 29 percent of all layoffs, according to job-tracker Live Data Technologies. That’s a nearly 31 percent increase from the years 2018 to 2022, when middle managers represented, on average, 22 percent of annual layoffs. Those displaced managers are finding it hard to find another management job, too. The number of job openings for middle-management roles has fallen by more than 40 percent since 2022, according to Revelio Labs, a workforce-analytics provider.

All of which is fairly dramatic, if little noticed; in fact, experts are calling it an historic shift in company org charts. But it’s been a long time coming. For years, senior leaders have complained that middle management is a costly bureaucracy that stifles innovation, caps productivity, and depresses profit margins. At one point, says David Lenihan, CEO of Tiber Health, his firm’s future revenues were being held hostage to the inability of his firm’s middle managers to make decisions. So, he removed a management layer. “Just have the decision come straight up to me,” he says.

Plus, many senior leaders feel that AI or other digital applications can handle many of the bureaucratic responsibilities traditionally done by midlevel supervisors.

The problem, experts say, is that major moves of this kind can come back to bite an organization, particularly in how chaotic a business can become without enough managers. Potentially, if companies just cut management layers but don’t change culture along the way, they wind up putting themselves into a negative loop. And it can certainly feel like one for the managers left on the job, since now they typically have more people to manage but without any increase in pay. According to Microsoft’s Work Trend Index 2024, more than half of managers—more even than employees—report feeling burned out at work. One report in Harvard Business Review called that statistic “staggering.”

Plus, even if senior leaders might decry them for slowing down innovation and decision-making, middle managers are responsible for getting teams and departments to implement changes and drive projects. They know, often better than senior leaders do, what’s feasible and what’s impossible. “When you get rid of middle managers, the margin for error becomes minuscule,” says JP Sniffen, practice leader at Korn Ferry’s Military Center of Expertise. Middle managers are also conduits to junior-level employees, answering their questions and helping them shape career paths.

Firms that cull managers need to focus on addressing the communications vacuum that can be the first fallout, experts say. Often, senior leaders just expect the middle managers who remain to pick up the slack. “Prioritize delegating and communicating,” says Raina Gandhi, a management consultant who at one point in her career was a laid-off middle manager. Indeed, she says, senior leaders should have a plan for how things will work after middle-management reductions and, just as important, be able to convey it to everyone that remains. 

Finally, senior leaders should be open to any suggestions the remaining managers might have. Lenihan says that a well-executed change should be a way for these managers to move up in the organization: “Give them a chance to grow."

Photo Credits: Abbasy Kautsar, Illustrator de la Monde, Linesol, Bounward, Russarts, Sudowoodo/Getty Images