There’s a job title that four public companies described, in the space of a few weeks, as a problem to be solved, and it might be yours. It’s ‘manager,’ with one or two people reporting to you. Uber Technologies (UBER) said Wednesday it would cut the number of those ‘micro-teams’ by nearly half, part of a plan to shed 10% of its staff, about 3,300 people, and end up with 20% fewer managers. Chief Executive Dara Khosrowshahi told employees the aim is ‘broadening manager scopes’ toward ‘a simpler org chart geared toward building versus managing.’ Chip Cutter’s story in Friday’s Journal calls the small-team boss the most endangered species in corporate America. We’d call it a category with a checklist.
The species is being hunted everywhere at once. Intel (INTC) finance chief David Zinsner said last week the chip maker had cut its layers of management in half, from 12 to six, having ‘pulled a lot of middle management out’ that was bogging down decisions. Coinbase Global (COIN) announced layoffs in May aimed at no more than three management levels below its leadership team; Chief Executive Brian Armstrong wrote that ‘managers should be like player-coaches, getting their hands dirty alongside their teams.’ Google, the Alphabet (GOOGL) unit, said it reduced the number of managers overseeing small teams by 35% last year. Uber, for its part, also wants 20% fewer people sitting seven or more layers from the CEO.
Player-coaches, everywhere
The bluntest version came from Axon Enterprise (AXON) President Josh Isner, who said the roughly four-employees-per-manager teams that used to be Axon’s norm were ‘borderline offensive’ because they slowed progress: ‘The better our talent is, the more self motivated the team is, the less management we need in the business.’ Grindr (GRND) Chief Executive George Arison sees flat structures as the future, particularly where AI agents and machines can do more of the work. ‘You still need people managers,’ he said, but ‘I think they’re going to be managing more people.’
The human data underneath: the share of departures that are middle managers has ticked up across U.S. companies, according to Live Data Technologies, and companies have been slower to replace the ones who leave. In a Robert Half survey last year, 40% of Gen Z professionals said they wanted a promotion that doesn’t require becoming a manager, which tells you the rung is unpopular on both sides. It’s also the rung that used to matter: leading a small team was how a company gave a budding leader a taste of management without drowning them. That steppingstone is being sawed off.
The checklist, before the letter
This is a specific, nameable career risk, and it has a specific financial answer. If your title contains ‘manager’ and you have one or two direct reports, four companies just described your seat as a cost line. That’s not a reason to panic. It’s a reason to do four things this month. One: size the emergency fund at twelve months of bills, not three, and do it before the letter arrives, because the same paper says economists expect August payrolls of just 53,000 against a 191,000 monthly average in the five years through 2019 — a low-churn labor market means a longer search. Two: know your severance formula and your unvested-equity cliff dates now, in writing, because a cliff that lands a quarter after the separation date is worth nothing.
Three: check whether your group life and disability coverage is portable. Employer-tied coverage disappears with the badge, and the time to price an individual policy is while you’re employed and healthy, not while you’re neither. Four: understand that a 401(k) loan is the worst possible bridge for a job gap, because it accelerates on separation — the balance typically comes due within months of leaving, and whatever isn’t repaid is treated as a taxable distribution, with a penalty on top if you’re under 59 1/2. A loan that turns into a tax bill the month your income stops is the opposite of a bridge.
None of this requires you to believe the letter is coming. It requires you to notice that four chief executives have said, in public, that it might. The umbrella gets bought while the sky is merely gray. Fifteen minutes; bring the vesting schedule and the benefits summary.