Every few years, organizations rediscover the same idea.
Middle management is bloated. There are too many layers. Decision making is slow. If we remove a few managers, everyone will move faster.
Lately the conversation has returned with renewed confidence. Companies are announcing flatter structures, cutting management positions, and pointing to AI as another reason fewer managers should be enough.
On paper, it makes perfect sense.
Managers don't build the product, they don't close the sale, and they don't write the code or answer the customer support ticket. Compared to the work that creates visible value, management can look optional.
I think the problem is that management suffers from the same curse as gravity.
Nobody notices gravity.
We don't wake up every morning grateful that our furniture is still on the floor. We don't congratulate gravity for another successful day of keeping the planet together. It does its job so consistently that we stop seeing it altogether.
Management is remarkably similar.
Nobody notices the disagreement that never became a conflict because someone stepped in early. Nobody celebrates the project that stayed aligned because priorities were clarified before people drifted in different directions. Nobody applauds the meeting that never happened because two departments resolved their differences over a quick conversation instead.
Good management spends much of its time preventing problems that never become visible.
The irony is that invisible work is easy to mistake for unnecessary work.
That's why middle managers become such attractive targets during restructures.
They rarely produce the output that executives can point to during quarterly earnings. Their contribution isn't measured in features released or contracts signed. Their work is coordination, judgment, prioritization and conflict resolution. Most of it disappears the moment it has succeeded.
It's difficult to appreciate something whose greatest achievement is that nothing went wrong.
Of course, not every manager deserves defending.
Some managers create bureaucracy instead of removing it. Some turn simple decisions into endless meetings. Some mistake visibility for value and become another obstacle between the people doing the work and the work itself.
Those managers should absolutely be challenged.
But that isn't the same as concluding that management itself has become obsolete.
When organizations remove large layers of management, the management work rarely disappears.
Someone still needs to resolve competing priorities. Someone still needs to decide which project gets delayed when resources run short. Someone still needs to have a difficult conversation with the struggling employee. Someone still needs to translate strategy into something a team can actually execute.
The work simply migrates.
Senior engineers become unofficial people managers. Product owners spend more time negotiating than building. Individual contributors find themselves coordinating across teams instead of focusing on their own expertise.
Organizations often celebrate eliminating management while in reality it is just redistributed.
The responsibilities don't vanish. They just become everyone's second job.
We often imagine management as another layer sitting on top of the work.
I believe it's underneath it.
Like gravity, it's part of the operating environment. It doesn't create motion, but it gives motion direction. It doesn't produce the work, but it creates the conditions that allow hundreds of people to move together without constantly pulling each other apart.
Perhaps that's why good management is so difficult to recognize.
The better it becomes, the less visible it appears. And that's a dangerous quality in any profession.
Because once something becomes invisible, it inevitably starts looking expendable.
Until it's gone.
And suddenly everyone discovers what gravity had been doing all along.
Have a good one.
- - Good Enough