Welcome to the era of the megamanager

The great middle manager flattening is in full swing, and those who remain are seeing their dominions balloon

WITH COMPANIES LOOKING to trim down their org charts and flatten hierarchies, some say we’re quickly entering the age of the ‘megamanager’ — a phenomenon where middle managers (the ones that are left, anyways) are seeing the number of employees they oversee rise very quickly, and are expected to handle the increased workload, often without much additional support.

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“In the past few years, the ranks of middle managers — bosses who sit between executive leaders and frontline staff — have been shrinking,” wrote Sarah E. Needleman in Business Insider. “Companies such as Meta, Citigroup, UPS and Amazon have moved to streamline operations amid heightened economic uncertainty and rising AI spending.” According to Indeed, middle management jobs dropped by more than 12 per cent in 2025.

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The data bears this out. A January survey by Gallup shows the average number of people reporting to managers rising from 10.9 in 2024 to 12.1 in 2025 (about a 10 per cent increase year-over-year), and since 2013, the average team size has risen by nearly 50 per cent. Across the board, managers are being asked to do more now than they were 10 years ago; 97 per cent of them told Gallup they also have some contributor responsibilities as well.

What Gallup found, though, was the increase was not distributed equally: rather, the megamanager phenomenon is occurring more at the top, in large companies, often in the tech sector, where AI has taken the biggest bite out of the middle management ranks. In this tranche, team sizes are sprawling, and 13 per cent of managers are now overseeing teams of 25 staff or more.

While the implementation of AI tools may be able to smooth over some of the problems, some in management are worried the megamanager trend risks significant drawbacks. “With 25 or more direct reports, meaningful conversations become impossible if leaders are mentally elsewhere,” wrote Matt Poepsel in HR Zone. “The problem is that everything feels urgent when you’re operating in constant reactivity. Every Slack message, every headline, every request from your growing team demands immediate attention.”

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Gallup’s data found that the changing management ratios are coming with a cost. “Managers are struggling more today than in the past,” Gallup said. “More managers report burnout, stress, jobseeking behaviour and lower engagement.”

And the megamanagers themselves are reporting the same thing. One manager, Chine Mmegwa, told Business Insider her team expanded from three reports to 24 across three continents after the company gutted the middle-management ranks in a restructure.

“I can’t be a manager of this many people and still be the go-to person for every single need,” they said. “This whole thing only works if everybody levels up.” Kieran Delamont