[_uhtu]

I'm my experience it's the exact opposite and they lay off ICs and leave the managers largely in place, making it worse.

[irrational]

Over the past 24 years, I've been through six major layoffs and it is always the middle managers that go first. Recently my company went through a massive layoff. I don't know a single developer that was let go, but plenty of middle and upper managers were.

[icedchai]

I’ve seen this first hand. You wind up with “managers” that have 1 or 2 reports. What are they going all day? Going to meetings, it seems.

[em-bee]

try seeing it from the other perspective: i am tasked with doing X, but i have to spend all day every day discussing X, and Y and Z with the higher ups and other teams, so that i have to get an assistant to actually do X.