Sarah E. Needleman

Thank you for having me.

It could be a little bit of both.

Basically, companies have been

trimming their middle manager ranks for the past several years in the name of efficiency and speed.

They say it helps with driving innovation.

So they're really reducing layers to remove bureaucracy and get things done.

Lately, Met and Block have gone down this path, but they are approaching it with different job titles and

They said they're offloading some of the traditional work that a dedicated middle manager would do to AI.

And so the people who are still doing, in some cases, still overseeing other workers or providing guidance, but they're also doing some of the hands-on work.

And there's really just a

Removal of the dedicated middle manager where that's like the only thing you do is manage other people.

That's really seems to be fading out.

And now the tasks that they handle will go to AI and they would do other things.

That would be a form of middle management.

I mean, it's going to differ from company to company, but generally speaking, yes.

That is part of the challenge for these managers where they have much bigger.

So there's fewer managers, but they're managing more people.

And so they're really stretched thin.

I spoke to a middle manager recently who has about two dozen reports and she said every single minute of her day is taken up.

There's no downtime to just kind of think it's her calendar is packed from minute to minute to minute.