A LinkedIn post by entrepreneur and Shaadi.com founder Anupam Mittal has triggered an intense debate on the future of middle management in the age of artificial intelligence, with professionals weighing in on whether AI will flatten corporate hierarchies or simply redefine leadership roles.
In his post, Mittal argued that artificial intelligence poses a greater threat to traditional middle management than to coders or frontline workers. According to him, roles built primarily around coordination, process knowledge and hierarchy are becoming increasingly vulnerable as AI tools replicate those functions at scale and speed.
“If you are a ‘manager’, here’s the bitter truth. AI isn’t coming for the coders first. It’s coming for middle management,” Mittal wrote.
He suggested that seniority-driven authority, once valuable for navigating systems and coordinating teams, is rapidly losing relevance. “You got paid for knowing who to call and how to get things done. That knowledge premium is now zero,” he added.
‘IC Plus’ versus traditional leadership roles
Mittal highlighted companies he is invested in that generate hundreds of crores in annual revenue with small teams powered by AI agents. He argued that the future belongs to what he described as the “Individual Contributor Plus” model — professionals who can independently build, code, sell or create while using AI to multiply their output.
“The ‘VP of Operations’ who doesn’t actually operate anything is an endangered species,” he said, adding that AI excels at handling non-deterministic workflows and unstructured data, areas where managers traditionally played a key role.
“If your job is mostly coordination, with no measurable output, you’re overhead.
And in a high-interest-rate world, overhead gets cut,” Mittal warned, urging professionals to focus on building skills rather than managing titles.
Industry voices push back, defend human leadership
The post quickly drew responses from industry professionals, many of whom agreed with the core argument while offering important caveats.
One user wrote, “This is uncomfortable, but mostly true.
AI isn’t replacing leadership.
It’s replacing layers.
The managers who survive will be the ones who can still do the work, not just talk about it.
Decision making, judgment, context, people development, those still matter.
But pure coordination as a role? That’s fading fast.
The ‘IC plus’ idea nails it.
The future isn’t title heavy, it’s capability heavy.
If you can think, execute, and use AI as leverage, you’re dangerous in the best way.
If you only move work around, the math just doesn’t work anymore.”
However, not everyone agreed that coordination roles are becoming obsolete. Another professional shared a contrasting experience, saying, “I don’t quite agree. In my last company, as AVP of TechOps, I helped double revenue in just six months, without any radical changes to personnel.
I achieved this by doing exactly what you describe in your post as ‘overhead’.
AI has been around for a while yet it needed someone who understands and adapts to individual human behaviour to come and optimize operations, build systems and maximize their human potential.”