Middle Managers Aren't Vanishing. Something Else Is

Opening

Hello, reader. Have you heard that middle managers are disappearing?

Two interesting stories collided last week. Meta renamed the titles of 1,000 Reality Labs employees to “AI builder,” and Block’s Jack Dorsey declared he’d cut the management layers between himself and 6,000 employees down to 2-3. He even said the ideal, ultimately, would be for “every employee to report directly to me.”

If you only read the headlines, it looks like “the end of the middle manager.” But I’m looking somewhere else. This isn’t a story about eliminating managers—it’s a story about who takes on the function of managing, and how.

🏷️ Changing a Title Isn’t the Same as Changing a Structure

Let’s first look at what actually happened.

At Meta’s Reality Labs, the existing titles were reorganized into 3: “AI builder,” “AI pod lead,” and “AI org lead.” Pod leads manage day-to-day execution, while org leads handle performance reviews and promotions, assisted by AI systems. Team sizes themselves didn’t change.

Block is more radical. In an essay co-authored by Jack Dorsey and Sequoia Capital’s Roelof Botha, titled “From Hierarchy to Intelligence,” the two invoke history from the Roman army to the Prussian general staff, arguing that AI can now replace hierarchical structures as an “intelligence layer¹​.” Instead of managers, they say, work gets done by DRIs (Directly Responsible Individuals)²​ and “player-coaches.” I wasn’t running Kkochi Coaching since 2023 for nothing—I saw this coming!

But here’s what needs pointing out. In February 2026, Block laid off more than 4,000 people—40% of its entire workforce—even as gross profit grew 17% year-over-year in 2025. Right after the layoff announcement, the stock jumped 20–25%. In other words, this “organizational innovation” isn’t a purely philosophical experiment—it’s also a narrative wrapper for a massive restructuring.

In the words of Chris Kaufman, StockX co-founder and leadership consultant, this might amount to little more than “moving the peas to the corn compartment on a TV dinner tray.”