In the last few months alone, Amazon, Meta, and Salesforce announced that they were going to begin the process of flattening their organisations. That they were going to have fewer and fewer hierarchies in their organisations. Fewer hierarchies means fewer managers.

The pattern here appears to be that in tough economic times, when efficiency becomes paramount, businesses are rethinking their need for managers. And concluding that they don’t need that many.

Because managers are expensive, and then you need managers to manage managers. And people to manage paying, looking after, and hiring those managers. And if you have self-motivated, ambitious, and disciplined lower-level employees, why do you need managers to manage them? Are we not capable of self-management? Why would you layer on unnecessary bureaucracy that only slows a business down?

We spoke to three experts about this. And learnt that hierarchies and layering are essential to a business based on its complexity. A more complex business will always need more managers, no matter the economy.

And that the reason we are undermining the role of managers in this present moment isn’t because we need them less and less. It’s because all the managers around us are just so bad.

This episode was written, produced and hosted by Sneha Vakharia. Write to her to become a part of Cost to Company.