AI is killing middle management — here’s what comes next

managers” have “no value in the future” — and the broader business world is starting to agree.

A wave of layoffs with AI at the centre

Chesky’s comments land amid sweeping management cuts across the tech industry. Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong announced this week that the company would eliminate “pure managers” as part of layoffs affecting 14% of its workforce, explicitly citing AI as the reason — noting that engineers now use AI to ship in days what previously took entire teams weeks. Block, led by Jack Dorsey, went further, cutting 40% of its staff in February and announcing that no permanent middle-management layer would exist going forward.

What managers must do to survive

Chesky argues that the only managers who will remain are those who get their hands dirty with the actual work — people who bring technical skill, product knowledge, or deep domain expertise, not just oversight. “You don’t manage the people, you manage the work,” he said. Research firm Gartner predicts that by 2026, one in five organisations will use AI to cut more than half of their middle-management positions. The message to managers is clear: become indispensable to the work itself, or risk being replaced by the tools now doing it.