Managers, get your hands dirty or get fired: Lessons from AI-powered tech layoffs at Coinbase, Block, Snap

As layoffs become the law of the land and artificial intelligence (AI) increases productivity, managers are becoming redundant.

Take Coinbase’s recent layoffs, for example. On Tuesday, the crypto exchange announced it would reduce its global workforce by 14%, or 700-odd roles. Inside a long article Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong said on social media platform X that everyone at the crypto company must be a “strong and active individual participant.” He also said the restructuring aims to develop teams that are “fast, lean and AI-specific.”

So how does this create problems for managers? Let’s take a closer look:

‘Player Coaches’ who get their hands dirty

Armstrong said in his post: “Every leader at Coinbase must also be a strong and active individual participant. Managers should be like player coaches and get their hands dirty alongside their teams.”

He added that the company’s future must have fewer layers to enable faster decisions and a leaner cost structure built to perform across all market cycles.

“We are flattening our organizational structure to a maximum of 5 layers below the CEO/COO. Layers slow things down and create a coordination tax. The future is small, high-context teams that can move quickly. Leaders will have many more, with 15+ direct reports,” he said.

Armstrong also suggested that his company have AI-specific pods. These pods will have AI-specific capabilities that can command fleets of agents to great effect. The crypto exchange will also experiment with reduced pod sizes, including ‘one-person teams’ where engineers, designers and product managers sit in a single role.

If this sounds too futuristic, it might help to know that it isn’t. In fact, others in the technology sector have made similar statements in the recent past. Last month, Block CEO Jack Dorsey said the company would lay off 40% of its staff and rebrand executives as “actors’ coaches.”

Snap CEO Evan Spiegel has framed plans to cut 1,000 jobs as part of a shift to small, AI-powered “teams.” Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg, Atlassian’s Mike Cannon-Brookes and others have expressed similar ideas.

Mega managers

As artificial intelligence drives profound change in the way technology companies operate, middle managers and executives appear to be the group most vulnerable to layoff shock.

The idea that a manager’s only job is to supervise others and not actively contribute or produce dates back to the Industrial Revolution, said human resources analyst and consultant Josh Bersin. Business Content. Bersin added that although this idea has since been eroded, the current AI boom is accelerating change and restructuring organizational charts.

Bersin told the publication: “Every employee now has an AI representative. The representative may know more than the manager. To become a manager in 2026, you must find more projects to participate in, new initiatives to lead.”

This trend reflects a workplace where remaining managers are expected to be more hands-on, actively contributing, supervising employees, and supervising AI representatives as well. mega managers if you want.

PayPal CEO Enrique Lores outlined a plan to save $1.5 billion over the next two to three years, and the effort was aided by an “AI transformation and simplification team.” The plan includes laying off 20% of the company’s workforce. Bloomberg reported.

Adapt or Get Left Behind

Artificial intelligence is increasingly driving companies to save labor and automate workflows to reduce costs and increase productivity and therefore profits. This could be due to either inflated staffing levels in the first place, or actual AI productivity gains, or even “AI-washing,” where companies claim they are producing more AI-powered products or services to appear more advanced but hide more serious job gaps.

But it’s important to note that the workers who remain here must have serious AI bona fides to remain employed.

This is especially true for managers who have been the target of recent staff cuts and are expected to use AI to do more with less, said Raman Shalupau, founder of CryptoJobsList. Bloomberg.

“This is not a general rule, and you should look at the scope of each reengineering. But when used by skilled talent, the advances of AI are undeniable,” Shalupau added.