Companies Are 'Unbossing' the Workplace, and Millennial Managers Are Getting Axed Middle-management positions accounted for almost one-third of layoffs in 2023.

^{This article originally appeared on Business Insider.}

Companies are increasingly ditching middle-management positions, and it could be millennials who find their jobs are most at risk.

The great "unbossing" has been brought on by several factors, including cost-cutting, Gen Z's distaste for management, remote working, and increased pressure on performance.

The repercussions may be that as future generations enter the workforce, they'll receive less mentorship and feel more stress coming from above.

But it's not just junior employees that could be worse off.

Lara Milward, a neuroleadership coach — which involves harnessing neuroscientific findings to improve how managers operate — with expertise in how workplace culture is changing, told Business Insider it's the 30-somethings who are buying houses, starting to have children, and juggling "career progression and family life" who may find their jobs suddenly axed.

"It could well be that that's the generation that takes this hit," she said.

Millennial middle managers are at risk

Joe Galvin, the chief research officer of the executive-coaching organization Vistage, told BI the unbossing trend had come about because of the normalization of working from home, advances in tech and artificial intelligence, and generational shifts.

"In the analog era, going back to, let's say, the '80s, you had to communicate manually to be able to align your workforce," he said. "Today, technology has made that all possible. And the behavior change that we saw during the pandemic was an accelerant to that."

In 2021, Steven Baert, then the chief people and organization officer of Novartis, told Gallup that traditional leadership was "becoming redundant." He said the company's goal was to have a workforce that's motivated and encouraged to be effective rather than told what to do.

It's now rarer to see the traditional version of a boss who walks around an office and checks in on what all their employees are doing.

"That boss' job has changed tremendously," Galvin said. "How you manage relationships in a more digital environment is much more difficult."

While Galvin said the intent of reducing middle management was to streamline communication between employees and senior executives, the impact could be unfairly balanced.

Middle-management positions accounted for almost one-third of layoffs in 2023, an analysis for Bloomberg found — an increase from 20% in 2018.

The analysis, by Live Data Technologies, also found that manager-level or higher roles made up almost 50% of all layoffs in 2023, a jump of 57.6% compared with five years ago.

Amid cost-cutting, layoffs, and more demanding performance reviews, confidence levels of middle managers have dropped significantly, research from Glassdoor found.

It just so happens that a lot of middle managers are millennials.

Between ages 28 and 43, millennials are often in their first management positions or on their way to climbing to more senior roles.

They were also hit the hardest during the "Big Firing" of 2022, making up 94% of laid-off workers, according to data from Revelio Labs and Layoffs.fyi.

"Since millennials make up a large portion of middle management, they, along with some Gen X, are most likely to be affected by this trend," Chris Lovell, a careers expert at SoFi Technologies and the founder of Careers by Chris, told BI.

"These are also the generations that were most likely taught to follow a traditional career path: Go to school, earn a degree, and climb the corporate ladder," Lovell said.

Work-life balance has changed

Ironically, millennials are "less interested in corporate bureaucracies or hierarchies," Lovell said, which could be part of why middle-management roles are being cut.

Data suggests that both millennials and Gen Zers are turning away from management positions, with a lack of trust in senior leadership, a perceived limited financial reward, and a greater focus on a work-life balance and time off.

Many middle managers are also burned out, with their teams being downsized and an increased workload.

Gen Zers could also be shifting the culture of the workforce, putting more emphasis on their boundaries, their mental health, and their desire for more autonomy.

"I think this collides with economies and the way that the world is going, that companies are cutting costs," Milward said.

"If we're thinking about a world of diversity, inclusivity, and including new generations, they are trying to move towards a more flat structure and less of the old-school parent-child sort of relationship," Milward added.

However, Joel Wolfe, the founder and president of the customer-service agency HiredSupport, told BI he believed this attitude from younger generations may be backfiring.

There's pressure on managers to constantly do better than they did the previous quarter, but millennials aren't necessarily performing at that high level. Millennial managers, Wolfe said, can be "difficult to work with."

"They have fixed schedules and aren't flexible, which is something difficult to adapt to, especially when you are working with different time zones," he said.

Millennials and Gen Zers are increasingly opting out of working overtime and going above and beyond for promotions, instead favoring more time off and leaving work at the door when they go home.

Wolfe said this may make them seem inflexible and thus vulnerable when layoffs happen.

"I prefer employees working when they have some tasks to do," he said. "I don't want them to sit in front of the screen and wait for the clock to strike 5 p.m."

The impact on zoomers

Shoshanna Davis, the founder of Fairy Job Mother and a consultant who helps young people with their careers, told BI she's not convinced unbossing was a direct response to how younger generations perceive the world of work.

But it's likely to disproportionately affect Gen Zers in their first or second jobs.

"They are new to the world of work, and they do really need managers to help them find the ropes," Davis said. "Ultimately, eliminating this kind of middle-management position means less guidance, less coaching, and less mentoring, which I feel like is still desperately needed in a post-COVID world."

Zoomers are already unenthused by management. They are the generation that coined the term "lazy-girl jobs" and seem to strongly believe in the benefits of "quiet quitting."

Will fewer management positions be replaced by higher salaries? Will career progression stagnate for Gen Zers if they have no millennial managers to look up to? What does this mean for the generations after them? Davis isn't sure.

"If it's just truly a way to cut costs, and there's going to be no replacements, then what incentive is there for people to perform at work?" Davis said.

She added: "I don't really see how that's going to pan out."