I work in a 4,000+ person company. Two years ago, the CEO created a dozen new positions underneath him. President. Chief of Marketing. Chief of Design. Chief of Product. Chief of Buildings. Etc.
Some of it was needed. Many were not. My boss, a director level person, would end up in a room with like 15 of these Chiefs-of-X, and hundreds of other directors. There was no heirarchy. You’d have a Chief of Product working with the Chief of Design and Chief of Marketing.
Many of them would just walk around, making demands to push their personal initiative, do 2-3 “update meetings” a day then go fuck around and collect their $500k salary
Late 2024, a lot of us found ourselves in “Office Space”-level BS where we’d have multiple bosses. I was reporting to two directors, and four Chiefs myself. Every week, I would get verbally chewed out by one, and praised by another - all different every time.
Last month, we got a memo that there was going to be some “restructuring” of departments. Then last week, half the Chiefs were quietly demoted to Dept Leads managing a small team, or fired. No other staff was fired except the C-levels.
I don’t know what sparked it.
But I won’t deny this seems like a path in the right direction.
That sounds like a really positive move.
I once worked at a company of about 100 people where there were more ‘managers’ than lower level employees. Almost every regular employee had at least two bosses, sometimes more. Some of the bosses didn’t even have anyone under them, but they still had the title. They would literally drift around the building going from one pointless meeting to another, or go ‘check up on’ (interrupt) their underlings. It was pure insanity.
I myself had two managers - my official manager who was CTO and who was nice but spineless; and an opinionated, rude, asshole who inserted himself into a position of bossing me and others around.
Eventually the company went under in spectacular fashion. But I had already moved on from that shit show by that point.
Corporate greed is getting so bad they’re feeding on themselves now that the lower ranks and customers are broke
We had a situation where the banks forced us to split into two companies. Our part would be a new-formed company under a previous department manager. Our choice was to join the new company or let go. So I told the CEO that I would like to work in the new company, but if he would give us that guy as a boss, we’d be bankrupt in two or three months. Most of my coworkers told him about the same.
Handbrakes were applied to the process, the company owner was called, he talked to us, too, and called in a general staff assembly to tell us that the original candidate would not be available for the role of CEO for “health reasons”. We got split off with a different CEO, and since then we are prospering like never before.
Back in 2015 a site I was consulting for held an ‘anonymous suggestion box’ and one of the most common suggestions was to fire the owner’s son, or at least remove all his management roles
He was a drug addict that routinely stole site equipment, solicited the female employees for favors, was verbally and mentally abusive and in charge of 3 departments
Said drug addict paid the on-site IT guy to pull the CCTV of the box and sat there for four fucking hours writing down every person who submitted a paper (most of the company)
Over the next 2 years most of those people mysteriously got fired or left
The brain drain collapsed the company functionality and in the middle of the pandemic they sold the entire company to their biggest rival, who fired everyone and basically used the offices as a second warehouse
No blame was ever given to the addict son and his part of the selloff bought him a cabana in Monaco and he is there right now gambling and drugging and buying high class hookers
Fucking nepotism is ruining the world but president dump just says we all have to work harder
Too many cooks in the kitchen can lead to indecision.
Hey, OP, what’s this that I’m hearing about you having trouble with your TPS reports?
I’ve seen “flattening” happening in other companies as well, particularly during downturns. Chopping the middle-management is a great way to cut the thicker parts of fat off your firm without costing you any immediate productivity. I would not be surprised if the owner saw a slowdown in revenue or got it into his head that he could sell the place to private equity and decided to clean up the balance sheet.
That said, I have been on the other side of this, as well. Going without any kind of management for months (at one stretch, nearly a year) at a time. Every couple of weeks, having to run around the business to wrangle more work. Writing my own performance reviews. Having no mentorship. Finding it difficult to ask time off work because who do I even submit that to? Suddenly finding myself in a meeting with a VP because a system latency problem got too much exposure and there was nobody between me and the C-levels.
Some amount of management - particularly skilled and experienced management - is an oft-underappreciated value add of working in a bigger and older company. I’ve gone through enough jobs where the middle management was shit, such that I do genuinely value it when I find it. Thankfully, my current manager is very experienced, easy to work with, well organized, and a valuable buffer with senior leadership to help manage expectations.
But it’s a delicate balance. Plenty of firms don’t know how to get it right.
