Middle Management

Managers that report to higher managers after collecting updates from lower managers or base workers are not exactly an intrinsically beneficial part of business.  A very small business has absolutely no need for middle management to serve as a step between communicating things from the top of bottom of the hierarchy in the other direction.  In many businesses of varying sizes, middle management is at best only a neutral presence that delays processes, albeit without any egoistic or malicious activities, or it is an unnecessary one that siphons money and attention away from crucial things like foundational productivity and direct communication (without an intermediate to receive and pass on information, this kind of communication is impaired).

As for an enormous megacorporations as opposed to small businesses, middle management could still be a waste of resources even though there is a much more complex hierarchy and perhaps far greater communicational distance between those at the bottom and the top of a company--or a single branch within a company.  Whenever possible, utilizing direct communication always saves time and reduces opportunities for distortion of the initial information.  Instead of cutting middle management positions entirely where there is no valid reason to keep them, plenty of larger companies will opt to remove or penalize the workers who do more substantial roles (as far as keeping the business afloat is concerned) for the convoluted or delusional trappings of certain middle managers.   

Pulling middle management out of a hierarchy where, needed or not, it is already an expected part of a specific corporate system might create temporary chaos, but start a hierarchy without including middle management at all, and even this potential problem vanishes.  There is no need to proliferate managerial positions when it is sometimes less expensive and smoother to omit steps involving middle managers completely.  This is not to say that there could not possibly be a helpful or needed kind of middle manager in very particular circumstances.  Factors like the size of a company, the nature of the projects or workers under that company, and how detached the upper echelons are from the bottom of the chain would determine this.

Non-rationalists might think they are the equals of rationalists, lazy or incompetent CEOs might think they are indispensable, and so on.  Inside and outside of a business context, a lot of people assume or ignore things as it is convenient for their arbitrary self-esteem or their social acceptance, as if these are worthy things to live for instead of things that should only be experienced in a society of universally rationalistic people.  As such, some middle managers who are genuinely useless or unnecessary might reject the truth of their irrelevance just because it would hurt their feelings, but this only means they are upset by the truth.

There could nonetheless certainly be situations where some sort of middle management actually facilitates communication or goal completion or some other such thing.  Simply being a middle manager also does not mean that someone misunderstands the true necessity or lack of if in their role, or that they are ego-driven tyrants whenever they get the chance.  It is just the case that for all of the supposed emphasis on efficiency and minimizing costs of business, many companies might leave middle management positions untouched, oppressing lower workers through underpayment while objectively squandering money, time, and attention on an entire set of roles that are very often totally unneeded.