Signs of “the Great Flattening” are emerging across corporate America. As companies increasingly deploy AI agents to handle workflow orchestration, task coordination, reporting, and information sharing, they are beginning to rethink one of the most enduring features of modern organizations: layers of middle management. The traditional corporate pyramid—where information flows up and down through multiple tiers of management—is starting to compress as AI systems take over much of the coordination work that once justified those layers.
Around 41% of employees say their companies trimmed management layers last year, according to Korn Ferry’s survey of 15,000 professionals worldwide. And recent restructuring efforts at companies including Meta, Citigroup, CrowdStrike, and GitLab have fueled debate about whether AI could accelerate a broader shift toward flatter organizations.
Cloudflare CEO Matthew Prince recently offered one of the clearest articulations of this view. After cutting roughly 20% of the company’s workforce while posting record revenue, Prince said: “The vast majority of those we laid off last week were measurers,” he wrote. He defined “measurers” as those in middle management, finance, legal, internal auditing, and revenue recognition.
