Tech corporations are systematically eliminating middle management roles, displacing tens of thousands of workers, as they pour billions into artificial intelligence. This restructuring, framed by CEOs as a pursuit of efficiency, directly concentrates wealth upward by reducing labor costs and intensifying the workload for remaining employees.
Coinbase, for example, laid off 14% of its workforce last week, citing AI-fueled efficiency. This follows similar actions by Amazon, Block, and Meta, which have collectively discarded tens of thousands of employees over the last year, with a specific focus on removing management layers. The drive to thin management ranks is gaining traction, particularly among companies rapidly adopting AI, according to Anastassia Fedyk, assistant professor at the University of California, Berkeley’s Haas School of Business.
Fedyk’s research indicates that as AI tools enable the shift of more work from managers to their reports, these corporate structural changes could become permanent. This fundamentally reshapes middle management roles, demanding managers act as both supervisors and producers, vastly expanding their responsibilities.
Who Profits
Tech CEOs openly declare AI makes it possible to “do more with fewer workers,” promising to “flatten their structures by cutting away what they call unnecessary management layers and bureaucracy.” Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Meta, announced a “year of efficiency” three years ago, stating Meta is “starting to see projects that used to require big teams now be accomplished by a single very talented person.” Two years ago, Amazon’s CEO, Andy Jassy, aimed to increase the ratio of employees to managers by at least 15%, a goal the company reported reaching one year ago. Jassy now suggests Amazon “will need fewer people” for some jobs. Block’s CEO, Jack Dorsey, envisions an ideal where all 6,000 employees report directly to him, eliminating management layers. Dorsey and board member Roelof Botha stated, “There is no need for a permanent middle management layer.” Coinbase’s CEO, Brian Armstrong, announced last week that the company is “rebuilding Coinbase as an intelligence, with humans around the edge aligning it.”
Who Pays
This pursuit of capital accumulation comes at the direct expense of workers. Middle managers are now in a “precarious” position, as described by Matthew Bidwell, a management professor at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School, who notes it is “harder to define your value.” Openings for middle manager jobs in the US had fallen by 42% by the end of 2025 compared with a peak in 2022, according to Revelio Labs, a workforce data platform. Managers comprised 13% of the US workforce four years ago.
The remaining managers face intensified exploitation. After fintech company Block laid off 40% of its workers this year, some engineering managers were assigned as many as 175 direct reports under its new AI-oriented structure, a stark increase from the typical six to 12 direct reports, according to Freeland Abbott, a former technical lead at Square, Block’s digital payments service, who was laid off three months ago. Meta managers, even before Zuckerberg’s January 2026 earnings call, saw their number of direct reports jump and were increasingly expected to contribute code, a task previously reserved for individual contributors. Coinbase now requires managers to directly contribute code and other work, with their direct reports jumping to 15 people or more.
This restructuring degrades the quality of work and human interaction. Prateek Singh, a software development manager who left Meta at the end of April, described the environment as feeling like “The Hunger Games” in the battle to be a top performer. He switched one-on-one meetings with his seven direct reports from weekly to every other week, relying on AI agents for updates and feedback. Singh warned that relying on AI to replace human interaction means people “lose touch with all the benefits you get from face time,” such as mentorship, human judgment, and guidance. Abbott echoed this, stating AI cannot provide team motivation, human connection, or support. He also noted that off-loading employee development to same-level colleagues could disadvantage less-experienced and marginalized teams.
Emily Rose McRae, an analyst at Gartner, noted that when managers lack support, their reports also suffer. She added that fewer layers of management mean employees will have fewer opportunities to advance, risking the loss of important human talent. The job of being a manager is already so stressful that many would choose not to be managers again, according to Gartner surveys, a situation likely to worsen as companies demand more work from fewer managers.
Some former Block employees expressed relief, with responses like “Wow, thank God I was laid off,” according to Abbott. Singh, who felt his job at Meta could be at risk, chose to leave at the end of April, stating, “I didn’t want to be the guinea pig.”
The System's Logic
Companies like Block are splitting management duties, with AI primarily responsible for sharing information, while “directly responsible individuals” oversee strategy and “player-coaches” manage employee growth. Coinbase similarly stated it will no longer have “pure managers.” While some experts acknowledge potential “friction” and “costs of change,” such as complicating jobs, creating new bottlenecks, and increasing risks of data leaks or system outages, these critiques do not challenge the fundamental drive for profit maximization that underpins these structural shifts. The state, through its inaction, enables this systematic dispossession, allowing corporations to redefine labor relations and intensify exploitation without meaningful checks. The current economic order, functioning exactly as designed, prioritizes capital accumulation over the stability and well-being of the working class, ensuring that every technological advancement is first leveraged to increase corporate wealth.