Are There Too Many Managers?
4/7/202650 min
Are too many people being promoted into leadership roles? As a result, are companies becoming too top heavy? If we’ve created a system that values managers over executers, is this a recipe for disaster?
In this episode, we’re joined by Ron Hetrick, Principal Economist at Lightcast and one of the most influential labor economists in the country. Together, we unpack one of the most important questions facing today’s labor market: whether modern organizations are overloaded with managers and what that means for productivity, hiring, layoffs, and career paths. Drawing on decades of labor market resear...
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First 90 secondsSpeaker 10:00
[upbeat music] Welcome to We Fixed It. You're welcome. The show where we take over companies, you come along for the ride, and we try to put them back better than we found them.
Aaron· Host0:10
[ding] A lot of us are wired to achieve. Give us a task, we'll crush it. Tell us we can't do something, we'll prove you wrong. Dangle a promotion, we will chase it relentlessly until it's ours. Because of this, we've built an entire economic system where people who stick around, show their loyalty, and prove their worth expect to move up. Bigger salary, more responsibility. Not all of us want these things, but a lot of us do. Recognition, compensation, mobility, fulfillment. So we play the game, and over time we move up. We get put in charge of others. We earn leadership titles. And once we've climbed the ranks, we don't wanna move backward. That's the big problem we're dealing with today. Have we created a system that has too many decision-makers and not enough executors? Are there too many managers? And if so, is this a recipe for disaster for our labor market? Are we all doomed? Well, that's a big question. Probably one for a labor economist. Fortunately, we have a great one with us today. Joining us is Ron Hetrick, one of the most respected labor economists in the country, and someone who looks at the workforce from a macro level with very real implications for how companies operate and succeed. Ron's the principal economist at Lightcast, they're a big deal, a former Bureau of Labor Statistics economist, and a trusted advisor to Fortune