Stuck in the middle: Why workers are avoiding — or want to leave — management roles

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Brittany Cummings, a communications strategist, was always ambitious.?

When she took her first public relations role in 2010, she promised herself she would rise up the ranks from account supervisor to vice president within five years. She did — but quickly found that the higher up the corporate ladder she climbed, the less fulfilling her job became.

“A bigger title and more money” didn’t make up for the shift in her day-to-day life, she said. Instead of doing the work that attracted her to PR in the first place, she was burning out supervising others doing that same work.

She started asking herself key questions: “What if I make just enough money to be satisfied? What if my title doesn’t matter and it’s really only about enjoying the work I do?”?

Cummings isn’t the only one grappling with these thoughts. Some professionals are even doing so before they reach management level. Findings from LinkedIn’s bi-weekly Workforce Confidence survey of thousands of professionals show that just one-third of individual contributors in the U.S. aspire to become people managers these days.

The pandemic not only prompted a widespread desire for work-life balance, it also facilitated shifts in organizational structure that included an uptick in middle management layoffs. What’s left behind is a shrinking cohort of professionals reporting high levels of burnout, stuck between executives’ demands and employees’ needs.

Organizations are getting flatter

Middle management positions comprised nearly one-third of all layoffs last year, according to a Bloomberg analysis. Five years earlier, that figure looked more like one-fifth of all layoffs. This points to a broader shift — executives are looking to flatten corporate hierarchies.

“I don’t think you want a management structure that’s just managers managing managers, managing managers, managing managers, managing the people who are doing the work,” Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg said last year.?

Other executives are following Zuckerberg’s lead. Earlier this fall, Amazon CEO Andy Jassy announced employees would be required to return to the office five days a week. In the same memo, he said senior leaders are being asked “to increase the ratio of individual contributors to managers by at least 15% by the end of Q1 2025.”

Jassy wrote the move to “remove layers and flatten organizations” is designed to “increase teammates’ ability to move fast” — and ultimately translates to fewer managers with more direct reports and a growing list of responsibilities.?

Recent LinkedIn research shows that just 37% of employees feel they can rely on their manager to help navigate periods of change like this. It could be because they’re stretched too thin. Across companies, the average number of direct reports a middle manager has increased by 2.8 times over the last six years, according to research from Gartner.

The pile-on means managers are accountable for 51% more responsibilities than they are comfortable with today. It also results in one in five saying they would willingly give up people management altogether.

But as hiring in the U.S. cools, it’s more difficult for those who want to jump ship to find somewhere to land. Career coach Sabrina Calouri said it’s currently a challenging job market. “I’ve had nearly 50 coaching conversations with those impacted by mass layoffs across media and tech in two months,” she said. “It’s tough out there.”

Some workers are likely sheltering in place. A recent analysis from LinkedIn’s Economic Graph team shows that managers aren’t quitting their roles as quickly as they were during the height of the Great Reshuffle. Managers’ rate of leaving their job in under a year spiked as high as 21% in February 2022, but has been shrinking year-over-year since then.

This could shift soon. “Moving into 2025, although gradual, we expect to see an end to the current hiring standstill across many industries,” LinkedIn’s Chief Economist, Karin Kimbrough, said.

Career expert J.T. O’Donnell recommended workers looking to pivot out of manager roles in the new year focus on laying out the advantages of such a change for an employer. “All this time you spent managing has meant less time on your craft, on your industry knowledge,” she explained. “Pivoting back gives you an opportunity to upskill and get cutting edge again.”

The impact on the workforce

Pivoting out of people management could also pave the way for stronger work-life balance. Nearly half of U.S. middle managers are burning out on the job, according to LinkedIn’s Workforce Confidence survey. That’s a higher rate than both their more senior and more junior colleagues, potentially because managers face more pressure from both of those groups.

Marketing manager Jayme Williams told LinkedIn News she combats burnout by “setting clear boundaries and knowing how to prioritize effectively.” She also emphasized the “power of taking quick mindfulness breaks — like a short walk to reset your mind.” In addition to walking, experts featured in Harvard Business Review recommend that those dealing with stress and anxiety on the job also try adjusting their posture, breathing deeply, laughing or humming. All of these activities stimulate parts of the nervous system that promote relaxation, which is essential to preventing burnout.

Direct reports are counting on managers to prevent or push through burnout. About 30% of employees report they have bosses who are too stressed to support them on the job.??

The problem is even greater in some industries: 38% of employees in the oil, gas and mining industry say their manager is too stressed to help them, followed by retail workers (36%) and construction workers (35%).

Meanwhile, Workforce Confidence data shows that seven in 10 U.S. workers would leave a job if they had a bad manager. Younger workers (Gen Zers and millennials) are most likely to agree. Employed job seekers, unsurprisingly, are also more likely to agree that they would quit over a bad boss. They’re also more likely to say their manager is too stressed to help them (44%) than workers who want to stay put (28%).

This points to managers being an important component of employers’ retention efforts. According to a recent survey of HR leaders, bad management is the largest and most common problem impacting organizations in the U.S. More than a third of respondents said they’re worried ineffective leadership leads to a negative culture and poor team dynamics.

“In my role training managers, I’ve seen firsthand that many ‘bad managers’ are simply good people in the wrong role or lacking proper education and support,” management professional Jeff Frey explained.

Calouri said she’s been seeing the same sentiment pop up with professionals she coaches. She recommends employers “learn the signs of burnout and provide leadership training and support as you thrust younger and less experienced emerging leaders into the deep end with more responsibility, bigger teams and fewer growth opportunities.”?

Cummings, the communications strategist, decided to create her own growth opportunities and eventually left her management role. She started her own business last year instead. “I’ve never been happier since making the decision to get off the corporate ladder and chart my own path,” she said.

That doesn’t mean middle management can’t be fulfilling — research from Gallup found that while managers report higher levels of stress, they also report greater levels of engagement and excitement on the job than non-managers. Take Williams for example. She cites being able to help others grow professionally while creating a more collaborative work culture as her main motivation in her marketing management position.

“From providing training and setting clear goals to handling the logistics of big projects, I aim to take some of the stress off my reports’ plates so they can focus on what they do best,” she explained. In turn, she feels better supported by her team, too. “When people feel like they’re not alone and have others to lean on and a team that’s encouraging them, it’s less stressful and more collaborative,” she continued. “It’s all about creating an environment where we can lift each other up.”

Allie Lewis , Bud Rashidian , Danielle K. and Rachel Cromidas contributed to this report.