Middle managers never have it easy. Subordinates resent them for climbing the corporate ladder. The top brass blame them when company strategy fails. In the popular mind, they personify corporate bloat; they are the stuff of satire rather than respect. Stress and burnout are their lot.

But lately, they have had an especially hard time. Lots of them are losing their jobs. In August, Google said it had cut 35 per cent of its managers overseeing teams of fewer than three. In September, Fiverr, a freelancing marketplace, said it would shed managers to focus more on artificial intelligence (AI). Amazon has been trimming all year in its effort to improve efficiency – most recently in July, at its cloud-computing arm. Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg has been complaining about “managers managing managers” since 2023. (In Australia, ANZ is among the big banks and other companies cutting jobs, including middle management.)