Actually my manager was "demoted" back to a programmer, which I think is a good thing. He was forced onto management a few years ago, but that was a waste of talent in my opinion. I also think a lot of stress he suffered as a manager is gone.
But yes, a lot of people were let go at the same time (8 months ago).
And the article, no useful information from what I can see.
One of the big things that keeps me where I'm working now is the org structure that keeps managers & non-managers on separate career tracks until significantly higher in the org chart than most big companies. Moving between manager & not isn't a promotion or demotion; it's a sideways shift.
As long as it's a demotion with a pay raise and a more senior sounding title like "staff engineer" then I think most technical managers would jump at the opportunity. The narrative drastically affects the perception.
Having too many also causes endless politics, empire building, meetings, etc, etc. Much more expensive than too few. They need to justify their existence somehow and since they can't directly drive features and you can only optimize a team so much that eventually ends in bureaucratic hell.
In the past maybe. Now that all managers are 'working managers' and treated as a manager and an addition human work unit I'm not so sure. Corporations don't normally replaced the fired manager with an additional human work unit and just expect the team to absorb one more HWU worth of work with the smaller headcount.
The organizational / social capital starts decreasing and then a few quarters later people see the costs of not having enough organizational capital. Boom/bust.
Management monopolizing organizational / social capital is itself a sign of a fairly unhealthy organization. So you might get a couple quarters of pain but then you'll end up with a better long term organization.
