As Uber cuts jobs, it is concentrating on among the smallest groups in its org chart.
In a memo saying layoffs affecting about 10% of staffers on Wednesday, CEO Dara Khosrowshahi mentioned the ride-hailing large would trim administration layers and lower the variety of “micro-teams” — these with just one or two direct studies — by almost half.
“The result is a less complicated org chart geared towards constructing versus managing,” Khosrowshahi wrote.
Uber’s focus is not merely on small teams of staff. It is teams that include their very own administration layer. The transfer comes at a time when many tech corporations want to reconstruct org charts with fewer layers and extra managers appearing as “player-coaches,” not merely supervisors.
In some instances, it is meant CEOs like Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg have touted the worth of the “tiny staff,” the place elite employees do the work that after took legions. Coinbase announced in Could that it could have “no pure managers” because it shifted towards AI-native pods, together with “one-person groups” through which a single worker takes on the work of an engineer, designer, and product supervisor.
For others, it is meant asking fewer center managers to supervise larger groups — and typically tackle extra hands-on work as effectively.
How AI is reshaping groups
Nowadays, managers can typically oversee bigger groups as a result of AI is altering what they do, mentioned David McJannet, cofounder of Dome Methods, a platform for controlling AI brokers. As an alternative of turning to a supervisor for steering on each job, staff can use AI for assist, he mentioned. Managers can then focus extra on setting targets and checking that staff are on observe to satisfy them.
“The job of the supervisor is much less about handholding,” McJannet mentioned.
Nonetheless, there will be dangers to trimming managerial ranks — and never just for these within the center. As managers are stretched throughout extra studies and tasks, career development and mentorship can fall to the wayside.
Paddy Lambros, the founder and CEO of Dex, which makes use of AI to attach software program engineers with employers, beforehand instructed Enterprise Insider that the extreme tempo of labor has made managers’ relationships with their studies “extra tactical and transactional.”
“It isn’t managing the human, it is managing the work,” Lambros mentioned. “And it is rather more sink or swim.”
Some executives are in favor of a shift towards fewer managers overseeing bigger teams. Fred Voccola, the chairman and CEO of AI software program firm Simpro Group, mentioned this transition must occur “quicker and extra aggressively.”
A Gallup report revealed in January discovered that the common supervisor’s span of management grew from 10.9 direct studies in 2024 to 12.1 in 2025. At Simpro, Voccola mentioned, the ratio of particular person contributors to managers has gone from about eight-to-one to 17-to-1 as AI helps staff produce extra.
The mannequin requires leaders to contribute on to duties, Voccola mentioned. He calls it “hands-dirty” work for managers. For instance, he mentioned he needs a chief expertise officer concerned in debates about software program structure and a chief advertising officer writing copy.
That does not imply each small staff inside corporations is out of date. In his memo, Uber’s Khosrowshahi mentioned the corporate would lower down the variety of micro-teams, not remove them fully.
Kevin Kelley, Boston Consulting Group’s world lead for organizational design, mentioned there are situations the place small groups are the precise wager. As an illustration, new initiatives may begin with only some folks. He mentioned small groups also can make sense when work is very unsure or extremely interdependent and requires senior experience.
“A small staff will truly make sense underneath these circumstances for some time period,” Kelley mentioned.
Micro-teams underneath main stress
For some executives, the case for lowering the variety of groups with only some direct studies is not solely about reducing layers or prices. Invoice George, former CEO of the medical-device maker Medtronic, mentioned such groups can lack the “variety of experience” to resolve issues independently merely due to their measurement.
“We have to have a multidisciplinary staff,” George, an government fellow at Harvard Enterprise College, mentioned. “The issue with a one- or two-person staff is you solely get a few disciplines.”
George expects to see extra corporations having managers oversee 15 to 50 folks, though there isn’t any magic quantity for the suitable span of management, he mentioned.
One objective of stripping out managers is to scale back the layers separating management from frontline staff — some extent Khosrowshahi raised in his memo, saying Wednesday’s restructuring would cut back by 20% the variety of staff who’re seven or extra layers from the CEO.
That may give executives a extra direct view of what’s taking place, George mentioned, fairly than counting on data filtered by a number of ranges of administration. That was his method when he ran Medtronic. When the corporate had manufacturing issues, he mentioned, he did not need to hear solely from the standard division.
“I am taking place to the ground and discuss to the folks on the manufacturing line,” George mentioned. “They’re going to give me the true story.”
