Tech companies are restructuring, cutting jobs, slowing the pace of new recruits. Reducing staff is part of a shift in workplace dynamics driven by artificial intelligence. But it's not just the employees being let go. The traditional management hierarchy itself is currently under pressure. Instead of simply reducing staff numbers, Tech Giants is rethinking whether a layer of management is needed in an AI-driven workplace. Previously, reports revealed that Google is cutting 35% of small team managers. Now Microsoft is taking a similar direction, with one of its senior leaders suggesting that AI could soon be able to completely eliminate many managers.
In a recent episode of Renny's podcast, Asha Sharma, corporate vice president of Microsoft's AI platform, spoke about how artificial intelligence agents can reconstruct organizational structures. She argued that if AI is embedded deep in the workflow, ORG charts may not be as important as work charts. “At the end of the day, when you have a set of capable agents and people can do more, you don’t think in the hierarchy and communicate upwardly.
Sharma explained how AI agents form their own “work charts.” This was described as a structure that automatically routes tasks to the right human and AI mix, rather than relying on a strict reporting hierarchy. “Organization charts start to become work charts,” she said. “Tasks and throughput are more important than ever.”
According to Sharma, the shift towards sorting work with AI agents will encourage businesses to confront new questions about task assignment. “When a new problem arises or a new task occurs, do you automatically decide how and where to actually route it? Who is working on that task? How do you observe whether the agent is doing the right thing? She said.
Companies are not the only ones deploying AI agents in the workplace. Sharma suggested that in the near future, employees may bring their personal agent stacks to work the same way they would bring their laptops and mobile phones today. “You can get access to a set of skills you haven't seen before,” she said. She added that even meetings could be transformed by the presence of AI agents. “They're going to be weird, but I think they'll get a little better.”
Recruitment at Microsoft
Sharma's comments about the potential for changing dynamics in the workplace occur when Microsoft is trimming staff and reorganised teams. In May 2025, the company fired approximately 6,000 employees across multiple divisions. According to a report from Business Insider, part of the motivation was to increase the “control span” for managers and essentially increase the number of direct reports under each leader while removing unnecessary layers. Microsoft is also slowing employment in non-critical areas and shifting resources towards cloud infrastructure and generating AI products.
Furthermore, Microsoft is not alone in this AIRE-led restructuring and changing leadership structure. Companies like Intel, Amazon, Google have spoken about the need to strip the management side of the company to speed up decision-making. Amazon CEO Andy Jassy has repeatedly emphasized that while Google runs its own efficient drive, the company hopes the company will operate more like a “startup.”
At Google, CEO Sundar Pichai has cut the role of Vice President and Manager, telling employees that employees need to scale without solving everything through personnel. Recently, Google announced that it had eliminated 35% of its small team manager positions, with many affected leaders returning to the role of individual contributors, CNBC reported. The company also offered a voluntary exit program and introduced shopping in multiple departments as part of a wider cost reduction.
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