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Tech giant Amazon.com Inc. is aiming to become faster and cut out busywork — and it’s targeting the middle manager to do so.
CEO Andy Jassy said in a blog post that, as the company has grown substantially, it has added a lot of managers and layers.
That's come with more bureaucracy, too, including "pre-meetings for the pre-meetings for the decision meetings," Jassy said.
In response, Jassy is asking each group within the company to increase the ratio of so-called “individual contributors” to managers by at least 15% by the end of the first quarter of 2025.
“If we do this work well, it will increase our teammates’ ability to move fast, clarify and invigorate their sense of ownership, drive decision-making closer to the front lines where it most impacts customers (and the business), decrease bureaucracy, and strengthen our organizations’ ability to make customers’ lives better and easier every day,” Jassy said.
Amazon is not alone. Pharmaceutical giant Bayer AG said in late 2023 it was aiming to cut management jobs as a preclude to a wider overhaul while United Parcel Service Inc. announced 12,000 job cuts earlier this year, with eliminations mostly in management. And in 2023, as front-line workers were stressed about layoffs and job cuts, about 50% of all observed layoffs were at the manager or executive levels, according to Live Data Technologies. That's up substantially from previous years.
Experts say years of hiring and the evolution of technology are forcing a shift in the role of the middle manager, and how those positions will fit into a rapidly-changing workplace.
“Amazon’s decision to cut middle management speaks to a larger truth: many organizations are realizing that bloated layers of management slow innovation and stifle agility,” said Steve Taplin, CEO of software-outsourcing firm Sonatafy Technology. “It’s not just a tech issue — industries like higher education, health care and government are equally bogged down by too many managers and not enough action.”
He said the reality is that everyone in an organization needs to be a contributor, not just a manager of people. Ultimately, it’s not just about cutting costs, it’s about driving results and fostering a culture of accountability in a market where speed and innovation matter more than ever.
“If someone’s role is just to manage processes and not directly move the needle, that’s where inefficiencies creep in,” Taplin said. “Companies that embrace this will stay competitive. Those that don't will find themselves stuck in the mud while the market races ahead.”
Bill Catlette, a partner at leadership and advisory firm Contented Cow Partners, said one issue of middle management is how companies hire and train managers. The average tenure of managers has shrunk to about six years, leading to fewer seasoned managers able to provide valuable leadership and guidance when necessary to their teams.
More-seasoned managers require less supervision but companies that hire less-experienced managers — often to save on costs — need to be able to augment and build their skills over time.
“Irrespective of the organization, my strong sense, after decades of business-leadership experience, is that most people in corporate America today are 'over-supervised and under-led' and thus [require] a higher 'leader-follower ratio,'” Catlette said.
Role of middle manager has changed with technology
Middle management is an artifact of the 1950s and 1960s, as the modern office rapidly came into being, said Naeem Zafar, former CEO and CEO coach, who teaches entrepreneurship at UC Berkeley Haas School of Business and Northeastern University. Upper management needed insight into their workers, so middle managers would engage in the labor-intensive task of collecting data and presenting it to top executives.
But in recent decades, software has grown to be able to track worker productivity and collect much of that data needed, leaving managers mostly to physically supervise.
“The role of middle managers will not disappear completely but will be drastically reduced,” Zafar said. “Their main goal will shift to mentoring and coaching frontline staff and frontline managers, ensuring their ideas are heard by upper management. However, we don't need as many middle managers to accomplish this.”
This is not just a tech-industry issue, he said. Others, such as health care, construction, finance, retail, consulting and agriculture, will follow, he added.
“But this trend is very strong, highly cost effective and comes with numerous other benefits. It's a wave that cannot be stopped,” Zafar said. “It's a tsunami heading our way.”
Jamie Aitken, vice president of HR transformation at performance-enablement platform Betterworks, said cutting deeply into middle management could end up being detrimental to employee morale and engagement.
“Without the support and direction of experienced managers, employees may struggle with clarity, direction and professional growth, which can ultimately impact the organization’s success and business outcomes,” Aitken said.
Aitken said middle managers are not merely administrative layers within a company, but provide guidance, support and motivation critical to maintaining a productive workforce.
“The benefits of investing in the development of managers — by providing them with the right tools and technology — are far greater than simply eliminating them,” Aitken said.
Meanwhile, managers who are keen to replace workers with generative AI tools or find ways to cut labor costs have also expressed concern those same tools could be used to cut their own pay or eliminate their own jobs. About 50% of managers surveyed by Beautiful.AI in 2023 said they believed artificial-intelligence tools could result in lower pay for managers, while 64% of managers said AI’s output and productivity was equal to the level of experienced managers and could potentially become better than the output of human managers altogether.
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