I’ve watched with dismay as tech industry executives have turned against middle managers, and more of them are losing their jobs.
I began managing small teams in 2013, after almost three years as an individual contributor at Yahoo, then Facebook. By 2014, I was line-managing other managers at Facebook. In 2015, I moved to Airbnb and oversaw a research and insights team of over 100 people. By the time I left over eight years later in 2023, I was the head of Airbnb’s Design Studio, running a large UX team with multiple layers of management. I’ve since become a lecturer in leadership at UC Berkeley and an executive coach for leaders at tech companies.
My experience as both a middle manager and senior leader has convinced me that culling middle managers is mostly a symptom of organizations not knowing how to use them. At the same time, many middle managers don’t know what it takes to be effective and miss opportunities to make an impact.
I know how difficult it can be to demonstrate effectiveness as a middle manager
When I first became a middle manager, leading UX researchers at Facebook, I knew my job would involve people management, but that was about it. I received general strategy updates, but the rationale was discussed behind closed doors by a small group of senior leaders and rarely shared. I often felt I lacked clear expectations and the necessary context to guide my team.
After waiting a few times for direction that never came, I learned that being proactive was the only way to make quick decisions about how and what to work on, so I could demonstrate my impact.
To keep the team moving, I focused on improving relationships and communication with product managers and engineers on my team, taking the lead in setting up new meeting cadences, and deciding when the focus of a project should change.
Rather than waiting for my manager to approve my decisions, I assumed I was empowered to make them. If I didn’t have the necessary information to move forward quickly, I’d ask for it.
At first, it felt risky to ask my leaders for forgiveness instead of permission, and it didn’t always go well. I can recall, with regret, one heated disagreement with my manager. I acted on my belief that researchers and designers needed to be more closely aligned on a specific project, but my manager disagreed. However, I still believe my proactive approach helped me rise through the ranks quickly.
I also freely shared feedback and ideas with my leaders to improve quality and efficiency, regardless of whether they requested it. I wanted to be a problem solver, not just an update reporter.
In today’s difficult corporate environment, where middle managers are often cast as unnecessary bureaucrats, I think middle managers would do well to be bold and proactive about showing their impact.
Leading other middle managers taught me that they can be essential to an organization
Later in my career, in 2022, when I was leading research at Airbnb, I drove a major re-org that would create the company’s design studio. As the new head of the design studio, I wanted to create an organizational structure where middle managers had autonomy.
On a day-to-day basis, I set our vision, goals, and expectations, but allowed middle managers to decide how to achieve them in collaboration with other leaders. I established leadership teams with ownership over areas of the product — for instance, Airbnb’s checkout or customer service experiences — and then asked those teams to work directly with their peers in product management and engineering to drive progress.
This structure improved speed, efficiency, and quality by parallelizing work and reducing bottlenecks created by the need to get permission from higher-ups. My middle managers told me they loved this setup because it gave them direct ways to demonstrate their impact.
Within my management team, we worked hard to normalize a culture of upward feedback. As a senior leader, I loved hearing about problems and suggested solutions from my middle managers. For example, when there were overlaps or gray areas in a team’s scope, or a team couldn’t make a decision because of conflicting information, I made sure I’d hear about it. It helped me learn about my organization, informed higher-level strategies, and kept me from getting out of touch with the work on the ground.
I worry that middle managers have become an easy target for out-of-touch executives looking to create sound bites around increasing efficiency and flattening organizations. At the same time, though, getting the most out of middle managers is a two-way street. It requires both that managers are proactive and drive impact, and senior leaders who invest enough in them to make them the engine of an organization’s success.
Meta and Airbnb did not respond to a request for comment from Business Insider.
Do you have a story to share about your experience of middle management in tech? Contact the editor, Charissa Cheong, at [email protected]
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