Your company may have fired the people holding it together.

Good morning. If Still Monday has become one of the things you open before deciding whether you’re ready for the actual workday, thank you. Keep voting, replying, and forwarding it to the coworker, manager or owner who would enjoy being reminded that their workplace is not uniquely strange.

Today we’re talking about one of corporate America’s favorite recent hobbies: removing managers. It looks fantastic on an org chart right up until somebody asks who is supposed to manage everything.

Let’s get to work.

Middle management has had an image problem for years. Too many layers. Too many approvals. Too many people whose calendar appears to be their primary work product.

Companies responded by flattening.

Uber recently cut about 3,300 corporate jobs while reducing management layers, broadening managers’ spans and shrinking the number of tiny teams with one or two direct reports. Meta spent much of the year pushing a similar idea: fewer layers, more individual contributors, more AI, less organizational drag.

All of that sounds reasonable. Bureaucracy is expensive.

There is, however, an awkward detail.

Georgetown University’s Center on Education and the Workforce projects that the U.S. could face a shortage of 2.9 million workers in management occupations by 2032—the largest projected occupational shortfall in its analysis.

Meanwhile, the managers who survived the flattening are carrying more weight. Korn Ferry’s 2026 global workforce study found that 42% of organizations had cut management roles during the previous year, while 55% of the managers who remained said they were exhausted. Thirty-nine percent of workers said too few managers left them feeling directionless.

That is where the conversation gets more useful.

Bad managers absolutely create work. A manager who asks for updates, attends every meeting and avoids every decision is essentially a recurring calendar invitation with dental insurance.

Good managers do something harder to see. They translate strategy into actual work. They decide what matters this week and what can wait. They resolve conflicts before they become resignations. They coach people who have never done the job before. They notice when two teams are solving the same problem. They occasionally prevent an executive’s “quick idea” from becoming everybody else’s emergency.

And when that manager disappears, the work usually does not.

It moves.

Some of it goes upward to senior leaders. Some goes sideways to experienced employees. Some simply sits there until everybody realizes nobody owns it.

Meta offers a particularly interesting example. After aggressively flattening parts of the company, its Applied AI group has recently begun asking some individual contributors if they would voluntarily move back into management roles.

That doesn’t prove flattening was a mistake. It shows that org design is harder than deleting boxes.

For owners, the useful question is not “How many managers can we remove?” Ask what each manager is actually there to make happen.

If the answer is forwarding information upward, fix the process.

If the answer is approving tiny decisions nobody should need approval for, fix the authority.

But if that person coordinates ten humans, develops talent, resolves tradeoffs and keeps strategy connected to daily reality, eliminating the position doesn’t eliminate management.

It just turns management into somebody else’s second job.

Meta’s Applied AI division has reportedly started asking some individual contributors whether they want to transition back into management roles. The move is voluntary, but it is notable after a year in which Meta pushed hard toward flatter teams.

The org chart has entered its remake era.

Korn Ferry notes that the average manager now oversees 12.1 employees, up from 10.9 in 2024, while organizations continue squeezing out layers and asking managers to act as “player-coaches.”

Fewer managers does technically reduce management.

It can also create one manager with seventeen tabs open and no idea what happened in Tab 6.

New U.S. unemployment claims recently fell to 196,000, the lowest level since mid-July, another sign that broad layoffs remain relatively contained even while companies remain cautious about hiring.

The labor market continues operating under its official 2026 setting: Complicated.

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Ask each manager on your team one question: What are you responsible for making happen?

The answer should describe an outcome, not a calendar. “I run the weekly operations meeting” is an activity. “I make sure orders leave on time without quality problems” is much closer.

If the job cannot be explained without listing ten meetings, the problem may not be the person. The role itself may need redesigning.

Removing a $150,000 management position creates a very visible saving.

The costs that follow are harder to spot. Senior leaders begin handling smaller decisions. Experienced employees coordinate work without the title or compensation. Projects sit longer waiting for clarity. People spend more time asking around to figure out who can approve something.

Payroll is easy to measure.

Coordination is usually hidden inside everyone else’s payroll.

Owners should calculate both.

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CEO: We removed middle management to speed up decisions.

EMPLOYEE: Great. Who approves this?

CEO: Your manager.

EMPLOYEE: You fired her.

CEO: Right.

CEO: Let’s schedule a leadership sync.

America may be approaching a shortage of the same occupation companies have spent years proudly removing.

Management has somehow achieved the rare distinction of being simultaneously considered bloated and in short supply.

Excellent planning.

Vote below and tell us what management looks like where you work. Too many layers? Too few? Or has everyone simply become their own manager?

And forward this issue to the person who somehow holds the place together while everyone complains about management.

They deserve at least one nice email today.

Technically Monday. Emotionally extremely Monday.

— The Still Monday Desk