David Cooper

They may be disappearing and companies are replacing them with player coaches or leads.

A healthy dash of AI.

Corporations are dressing this all up as exciting changes.

But is it just layoffs with some lipstick on?

What could possibly go wrong?

I'm here with someone who's recently written about this.

She is a leadership and workplace correspondent at Business Insider.

Her name, Sarah E. Needleman.

Sarah, welcome to the show.

So when you heard companies like Meta and Block are trying to retire the phrase middle manager, what problem are they trying to solve?

Is this innovation or is this just cost cutting with fun branding?

I want to make a quick disclaimer and apologize to anyone I used to work with in advance.

I used to be a middle manager at a big tech company.

Well, is a line manager someone who manages engineers directly at a tech company?

Is that considered middle management?

The biggest part of my job, I had seven reports, was just dealing with their BS, like listening to them, sitting there in meetings and having them vent and then going and talking to the people they're having conflict with.

It was all social stuff.

And yes, it was annoying, but I feel like that stuff was needed for these people's sanity.

What are people going to do if they have problems at work?

And they have like a manager with 20 reports who also has other tasks to do than manage them.