I was in Silicon Valley during the dot-com crash in the early 2000’s. The impact was visible. Traffic thinned out, companies went out of business, layoffs were everywhere, and the message to anyone thinking about a career in tech was loud and clear: this is a bad bet. CS enrollments cratered.
Fast forward about five years, and I was doing recruiting. We couldn’t hire new graduates because there weren’t any. The pipeline had dried up, and the supply was gone. It took years to course-correct and bring people back into CS programs.
The management pipeline is following the same pattern right now. And there are two factors accelerating it.
The first is generational. Younger workers are actively choosing not to go into a management track. DDI’s research calls it “conscious unbossing.”
I can’t say I blame them. They are simply watching what’s happening. Globally, manager engagement is at 22%, the lowest Gallup has recorded in twenty years. It’s down nine points since 2022. 46% of middle mangers are thinking about quitting their job in the next year. Why? Because most report that when they took the manager job, their stress went up.
The second factor is AI. The headlines have been relentless. AI is coming for any job that requires coordination, task assignment, status updates, and the like. 72% of CEOs believe their employees will be managing AI agents within five years.
The people watching from below are drawing conclusions. If the manager job looks both precarious and miserable, why would anyone sign up?!?
People are opting out today. Young leaders are watching and saying no. Organizations are cutting management layers, but the consequences won’t be felt for three to five years. By the time the succession crisis is obvious and you need someone to step up, nobody will be ready.
The data is already pointing there. 77% of CHROs say they lack confidence in their organization’s leadership pipeline. Only 20% have successors ready for critical roles. Half of CEO successions in 2024 were unplanned, up from 43% the year before. It’s happening now.
Back in the dot-com downturn, the CS enrollment drop didn’t make headlines. Everyone was focused on the current crisis. By the time the industry needed engineers, the pipeline was dry. Organizations taking this problem seriously today will be the clear winners when the problem becomes apparent to the rest.
They Aren’t Wrong. Being a Manager is Hard.
I worked with a client who wanted to be a manager. He was motivated, willing, and genuinely wanted the role. But he was unequipped for what the job actually required, and the employees beat him up over it. By the time we were trying to help him, the trust was already gone. The team had formed opinions, and the window for a turnaround had closed. He eventually stepped back into an individual contributor role.
Here’s what happened next. The employees were fine. Nothing changed for them. The business is the one that paid. Nobody was in the role and nobody else was being prepared for it. The job had a reputation inside that organization because everyone watched what had happened to the last person who tried it.
One experience, with inadequate support, and the pipeline closes.
So when younger workers look at that job and say no, they’re not wrong about what they’re seeing. Research shows managers spend over half their time on administrative work they themselves identify as low value. The meaningful work of coaching people, developing the team, and building the next layer of leaders gets crowded out.
The job as currently designed kind of deserves its reputation.
The Management Function is Valuable
Gallup found that managers account for 70% of the variance in employee engagement. It is the dominant factor in job satisfaction. More than pay, more than culture initiatives, and more than strategy. It is the manager.
That number doesn’t disappear in the age of AI. If anything, it becomes more consequential. AI can handle the administrative work that already crowds out what matters. What it cannot replace is the human capacity to develop people, build trust, read what a team actually needs, and create an environment where people do their best work.
The baby is leadership. The bathwater is the job we built around it. We need to stop throwing them out together.
This isn’t a marketing problem. You can’t convince people that a painful role is great. It’s a design problem. The role has to be worth wanting, and that means it has to be deliberately designed, not inherited from whoever held it before. And here’s the piece that doesn’t get said enough: if your managers don’t enjoy the work, they’re modeling exactly what makes the next generation say no. You can’t recruit for a role that looks like punishment.
Let’s start by helping our current managers enjoy their jobs. Let’s design their role so they are successful, do rewarding work, and contribute to the bottom line. That’s where pipeline development needs to start.