> 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, wel

> 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.