In May, Kyle made a career move that was years in the making.
A combination of layoffs and a hiring freeze had downsized his team, and he was succumbing to burnout.
“I was tired of being stuck between upper management — who became more and more ruthless at enforcing hard metrics designed to root out anyone with a work-life balance, wildly unpopular return to office policies, and layoff after layoff on one side — and employees who wanted more money, more flexibility, and a more relaxed philosophy of work,” said Kyle, who asked for partial anonymity due to his fear of professional repercussions.
After exploring his options, he moved to a non-managerial role at the same company, which he said came with a pay cut.
The last few years have been particularly challenging for many middle managers, whose burnout rates have risen. They’ve been targeted for layoffs as companies look to cut costs, and those who remain have often been asked to do more with less amid hiring slowdowns. Some face challenges managing remote teams or enforcing return-to-office policies. And with companies scaling back on pay increases and promotions, middle managers are often the bearers of bad news. Some say the job isn’t worth it anymore — and are looking for a way out.
“To some degree, middle managers are historically the glue that translates high-level strategy to individual actions that frontline workers execute on,” Aaron Terrazas, chief economist at Glassdoor, told Business Insider. “But that glue is becoming a little bit undone in recent months just because there is so much pressure pulling in both opposite directions for that group.”
Caught between a rock and a hard place
While middle managers have always had to please the people above them while maintaining credibility below, Terrazas said “that’s a very tough position to be in right now, and I think you see that in a lot of their sentiments.”
Layne Tisdel Martin, a 43-year-old middle manager for a US-based tech company, said she’s “all too familiar” with this feeling.
“Sometimes I feel like the workers see me as an agent of the ‘evil overlords’ and the C-suite sees me as a union rep,” she told BI. “It’s part of my job to reconcile their interests.”
Part of this involves telling workers more than in the recent past that a raise or a title bump isn’t coming. A Workday report showed median promotion rates in 2023 were lower than those in 2022 for all 10 industries measured, with tech, professional services, retail, and insurance seeing drops of more than 20%.
Raises are getting smaller and less frequent. August’s year-over-year increase in average hourly wages was 3.8%, lower than the most recent peak of 5.9% in March 2022.
Tsvetelina Nasteva, a 32-year-old human resources manager for Casinoreviews.net, said one of the most difficult parts of her job is communicating disappointing raises to employees on her team, something she’s had to do more of in recent years. She tries to “soften the blow” by reminding her team of her company’s benefits, work-life balance, and growth opportunities.
“But I know it’s still tough for people to hear,” she said.
Benjamin Granger, chief workplace psychologist at Qualtrics, told BI that the crux of the middle manager’s job is to understand why a decision is being made and then clearly relay this reasoning to workers.
“Sometimes in academic literature, we call that ‘procedural justice,’ where I might not like the outcome, but at least you took the time to explain to me the rationale,” Granger said, adding that managers also have to go further and explain why the decision is relevant to the worker — and maybe even find a silver lining.
A new sticking point in the post-pandemic world is the return-to-office mandate. In recent years, workers who have been asked to return to the office have found myriad ways to game the system: “Coffee-badging” means swiping your badge in case bosses are tracking, but not staying at the office to work, and “hushed hybrid” means working remotely more than the policy allows, hoping you’ll fly under the radar.
Terrazas calls RTO “a special place of friction” for middle managers because “it deputizes them to be the enforcers.”
Tiago Pita, a 37-year-old brand and e-commerce director based in the UK, manages a team with both in-person and remote workers. He said it can be challenging to ensure that both groups of employees feel “equally included and engaged.”
“It was a learning curve for everyone involved,” he told BI.
Doing more with less
Glassdoor’s lead economist, Daniel Zhao, wrote in a March post that increased pressure on middle managers in recent years could be due to the “year of efficiency” — a term used by Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg last year to describe a period of layoffs, project cutting, and reduced hiring — extending into 2024.
“Middle managers are under more pressure to do more with less, managing demands from leaders while placating anxious employees,” Zhao wrote.
Vanessa Yuen, a 34-year-old engineering manager for a US-based SaaS company, said one of her biggest challenges in recent years has been the downsizing of her team.
She said her team began taking on extra work during a hiring slowdown and is not sure when the “extra burden” will end. She said it’s become challenging to keep her team motivated and prevent burnout.
“The hardest part is balancing the need to meet company goals with the reality that my team is working at full capacity, if not beyond it,” she told BI.
Not having enough time or power was a common theme in BI’s reporting on middle manager burnout.
“In many cases, they don’t have full autonomy to make decisions, but they’re held accountable as if they do,” Granger said.
Bryan Hancock, a McKinsey partner and one of the authors of the book “Power to the Middle: Why Managers Hold the Keys to the Future of Work,” agreed, saying, “In a world where they’re spending less than a third of their time managing people and the people leadership expectations are increasing, it’s just creating added stress and tension in the role.”
The question of whether to go for a promotion or demotion
The stress of the job is among the reasons some middle managers told BI they’ve considered asking for a demotion. But for now, many said their plan is to try to deal with the stress and make the situation better.
“Taking a demotion or stepping away is a very big decision, and for now, I believe in tackling these issues head-on,” Pita said.
Tisdel Martin has a different perspective. She said she’s focused on working hard and getting promoted so she can “call more of the shots and make things better.”
But this path doesn’t make sense for everyone.
While Kyle left his middle manager job earlier this year, he said his new non-managerial role has several similarities to his old position. However, he has no direct reports — which means he doesn’t have to worry about firing people or holding them accountable to company policies.
He said his role has “manager” in the title because his company didn’t want his job switch to “look like a step-down” — but he expects his new role to pay less than his old one once commissions are accounted for. However, the income decline that comes with having a lower-stress job is worth it.
“I’ve honestly never been happier,” he said.
Are you a middle manager or have you left middle management? Reach out to these reporters at jzinkula@businessinsider.com and mhoff@businessinsider.com to share your experience.
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