Tech Managers Stretched Thin as AI Reshapes Team Structures

Managers are coding and leading simultaneously

Tech managers are facing a new reality: oversee more people, write more code, and somehow find time to develop their teams. The structural changes sweeping through the industry—what some call the Great Flattening—have eliminated management layers and expanded team sizes, leaving less bandwidth for the coaching and career guidance that once characterized strong leadership.

Mitchell Kosowski, a software engineering manager at a tech startup, captures the tension succinctly. He manages roughly 20 direct reports, spends five hours daily in meetings, and still codes. "The joke is I code 90% of the time, and I manage 90% of the time, which I think doesn't feel like much of a joke these days," he said.

Paddy Lambros, founder and CEO of Dex, an AI-powered platform connecting software engineers with employers, notes that the era of "purely pastoral managers" leading small teams of five or six has ended. Managers increasingly focus on tactical execution rather than human development. "It's not managing the human, it's managing the work," Lambros explained. "And it's much more sink or swim."

AI enables bigger teams but changes the role

Artificial intelligence is both accelerating the problem and enabling new solutions. Companies are using AI to handle administrative tasks that previously constrained team sizes, allowing them to assign more direct reports per manager.

Alex Bouaziz, cofounder and CEO of HR platform Deel, said his company previously aimed for eight to ten employees per manager but now targets twelve to fifteen. The shift works because AI absorbs routine management overhead. Deel also expects managers to function as player-coaches, staying connected to customers and product work rather than operating purely in an oversight capacity.

Bouaziz warns against pushing the model too far. Assigning twenty to thirty direct reports effectively signals that "we don't really want any interactions between the manager and the ICs," he said, referring to individual contributors. He believes investing in employee development remains essential for cultivating future leaders.

Meanwhile, AI is creating an alternative path for top performers who never wanted to manage in the first place. Lambros said Dex employs former founders, COOs, and heads of engineering as senior individual contributors rather than forcing them into management roles. "Freeing those people up to go and do the thing they used to be good at—it probably makes more sense than keeping them as management," he noted.

Career development becomes informal and on-the-fly

The compressed timelines and relentless feature velocity that AI enables are reshaping how career conversations happen—if they happen at all.

Scott Stevenson, cofounder and CEO of legal AI company Spellbook, said career development is increasingly woven into daily work rather than reserved for formal sessions. "It's a lot less formal and a lot more just on-the-fly, in-the-trenches feedback because everything is very fast-moving now," he explained.

One-on-one meetings between managers and employees are often the first casualty when schedules tighten. Stevenson said colleagues across tech report cutting these sessions to reclaim thirty to sixty minutes and "keep up with the fire hose." While he still considers in-person time irreplaceable, "it's less frequent now, though."

To prevent career growth discussions from disappearing entirely, Spellbook conducts formal annual and midyear reviews. Kosowski recommends employees proactively raise career development with their managers and "fight for that time."

Why it matters

The shift from development-focused management to execution-focused leadership has immediate productivity benefits but risks creating a generation of workers who lack clear growth paths. As AI continues to reshape organizational structures, companies that preserve space for genuine career development may gain an advantage in retaining and cultivating talent—even as the mechanisms for delivering that development evolve.

These details were first reported by Business Insider.