Managers managing managers is out. Managers managing AI agents is in.

"Back in 2023, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg made an observation about his company: "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," he said during a company Q&A session, The Verge reported at the time. Then came the great flattening. Companies from Meta to Citi began to cull their ranks of middle managers."

""I think you're just going to see a different modality within a company, which is an agent manager," Jeanne DeWitt Grosser, the chief operating officer at Vercel, told Business Insider. Agents have become one of the central innovations of 2025. They're commonly defined as virtual assistants that can complete tasks autonomously. They break down problems, outline plans, and take action without being prompted by a user."

Companies are increasingly deploying autonomous AI agents to perform tasks, breaking down problems, outlining plans, and taking action without user prompts. The rise of agents has followed a wave of organizational flattening that reduced middle management. Some firms train agents on top human performers; Vercel trained an agent on its best sales rep and reduced a ten-person team to one top performer while reassigned others. Managing agents requires different skills than managing people, emphasizing clear objectives, technical proficiency, and overseeing agent behavior. Agent management may lower traditional managerial experience requirements while increasing demand for technical skills.

Read at Business Insider