Why the Purge of Middle Managers Could Backfire

Middle managers are on the chopping block at Uber, Intel, Coinbase and other companies. Top executives seem to view them as unnecessary speed bumps on the highway to innovation, and rank-and-file workers love to gripe about layers of bosses who do, what, exactly?

It’s hard to think of another role that gets so little love from both ends of the org chart.

Just give it a few years. We’re underestimating the often-invisible work of people who enable higher-ranking leaders to delegate and get the most out of front-line employees.

So, I’m calling it now: When we realize what’s been lost, middle manager will be the hottest job out there. And filling the void won’t be easy.

The Georgetown University Center on Education and the Workforce projects U.S. businesses will face a shortage of 2.9 million managers in 2032. This is by far the biggest anticipated shortage among major job categories. Nurses and teachers are second and third with projected shortages of 611,000 and 362,000, respectively.

“Management is sort of a unique category in that there isn’t a single pipeline that gets you there,” says Madeleine Adelson, a policy analyst at the Georgetown center and co-author of its report on skills shortages. “That can work both for and against it.”

Good managers can come from a range of educational and professional backgrounds, which creates a large pool of potential candidates. But to be a boss, you first have to want to be a boss. We’re in a job market where even graduates of top M.B.A. programs—traditionally America’s boss factories—are struggling to get hired .

Plus, taking on managerial duties too often amounts to a “dry” promotion that brings no additional pay and less security. Raising your hand for middle management right now feels like volunteering to be laid off the next time your employer decides to become more “nimble.”

“I figured this could come one day,” says Alex Butterworth, who was a senior legal counsel at Uber until he was laid off this month as part of the company’s reduction of small-team managers. “I was like, ‘At some point, there’s going to be layoffs and I might get caught.’”

He didn’t mind the risk because he has ample savings, no dependents and a second income stream as a restaurant investor . Now that the ax has fallen, though, Butterworth isn’t sure he has the stomach for another stint in corporate America’s vulnerable middle. His job search will target general counsel positions at startups.

At the top, he figures, a solid performer’s results are evident. In the middle, it can be hard to shake the Dwight Schrute-esque caricature of a manager who was shunted into some do-nothing role where he can’t cause too much damage.

“You do have individual contributors who got promoted to manager and have no idea how to actually manage, and are absolutely slowing things down and causing problems,” Butterworth says.