Managers who don’t produce are becoming expendable.
As tech layoffs roll on and org charts flatten, some industry leaders are sending them a sharp directive: Keep tabs on your reports, but be sure to contribute, too.
In a letter to Coinbase staff on Tuesday, CEO Brian Armstrong announced plans to lay off 14% of its workforce and said everyone at the crypto company must be “a strong and active individual contributor.” He also said the changes mean teams will be smaller — in some cases, just one person and their AI agents — and that there will no longer be “pure managers.”
Sound familiar? Last month, Block CEO Jack Dorsey said the company was slashing 40% of staff and rebranding managers as “player-coaches.” Snap CEO Evan Spiegel framed plans to cut 1,000 jobs as part of a shift toward small, AI-powered “squads.” Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg, Atlassian’s Mike Cannon-Brookes, and others have expressed similar ideas.
‘Believing the hype’
The trend reflects a shrinking tech world where middle managers are among the most vulnerable to cuts, while those who remain are expected to get their hands dirty, supervise more employees, and, increasingly, oversee AI agents, too. They even have a new name: megamanagers.
A January Gallup survey shows that managers were responsible for an average of 12.1 workers last year, up from 10.9 in 2024. It also found that 97% of managers are taking on individual contributor work that falls outside of their leadership purview.
Further, employers also advertised 12.3% fewer middle-manager jobs in 2025 than in 2024, according to job site Indeed. (Listings overall also declined.)
Tech leaders are among the first to shake up their org charts this way because they were early to adopt AI, said Richard Lachman, professor of digital media at Toronto Metropolitan University and author of “Digital Wisdom: Searching for Agency in the Age of AI.” They’re also, in many cases, strong proponents of the technology, confident that it can boost productivity.
“They are believing the hype,” he said.
This means that the bar for success as a manager is rising sharply, with companies expecting far more hands-on involvement across teams and functions, Lachman added.
The expectation for managers is to “have enough direct on-the-ground knowledge” to perform the same work as the people they oversee, he said.
An evolving model
The idea of a manager whose sole job is to supervise others — not to contribute directly — dates back to the Industrial Revolution, said Josh Bersin, a human resources analyst and consultant.
“Labor did the work, and the manager told them what work to do,” he said.
While that model has been eroding for decades, AI is now accelerating the shift and reshaping org charts, Bersin added, as the technology automates tasks and puts vast knowledge at workers’ fingertips.
“Every employee now has an agent,” he said. “The AI might know more than the manager.”
To make it as a manager in 2026, “you have to find more projects to get involved in, new initiatives to lead,” Bersin said.
A Coinbase manager who was not affected by Tuesday’s layoffs said AI has had a significant impact on how work gets done at the company.
They said that Armstrong’s memo didn’t reveal anything new about managers’ responsibilities, since those expectations had already been communicated. In their view, managers should only be concerned if they don’t know how to use AI or don’t have good ideas.
“Then you’re kind of in trouble,” the worker said.
