More Innovative Google Management: Hit Delete for Middle Managers
August 28, 2025
This blog post is the work of an authentic dinobaby. Sorry. No smart software can help this reptilian thinker.
I remember a teacher lecturing about the Great Chain of Being. The idea was interesting. The Big Guy at the top, then not-so-important people, and at the bottom amoebae. Google, if the information in “Google Has Eliminated 35% of Managers Overseeing Small Teams in Past Year, Exec Says,” is on the money has embraced the Great Chain of Being.
The write up says:
Google has eliminated more than one-third of its managers overseeing small teams, an executive told employees last week, as the company continues its focus on efficiencies across the organization. “Right now, we have 35% fewer managers, with fewer direct reports” than at this time a year ago, said Brian Welle, vice president of people analytics and performance ….“So a lot of fast progress there.”
Yep, efficiency. Quicker decisions. No bureaucracy.
The write up includes this statement from the person at the top of the Great Chain of Being:
Google CEO Sundar Pichai weighed in at the meeting, reiterating the need for the company “to be more efficient as we scale up so we don’t solve everything with headcount.”
Will Google continue to trim out the irrelevant parts of the Great Chain of Being? Absolutely. Why not? The company has a VEP or a Voluntary Exit Program. From Googler to Xoogler in a flash and with benefits.
Several observations:
- Google continues to work hard to cope with the costs of its infrastructure
- Google has to find ways to offset the costs of that $0.47 per employee deal for US government entities
- Google must expand its ability to extract more cash from [a] advertisers and [b] users without making life too easy for competitors like Meta and lurkers waiting for a chance to tap into the online revenue from surveillance, subscriptions, and data licensing.
Logic suggests that the Great Chain of Being will evolve, chopping out layers between the Big Guy at the top and the amoebae at the bottom. What’s in the middle? AI powered systems. Management innovation speeds forward at the ageing Google.
Fear, confusion, and chaos appear to be safely firewalled with this new approach.
Stephen E Arnold, August 28, 2025
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