Reduction in force

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Reduction in force
rɪˈdʌkʃən ɪn fɔːs (n.)

The permanent removal of headcount, usually targeted at that sweet spot of lower middle management whose own reports aren't so useless they can't get by without supervision on their own, and who aren't so senior that they get to make decisions about whose BC roles should be subject to a RIF.

Every one bar the CEO has a line manager. The from is organised like an inverted, multilayer family tree. The basic job of a line manager, qua line manager, is to supervise her direct reports. Line managers are human beings of course, and they all have other things to do them supervise their direct reports. Three things change the higher up the multi level marketing scheme you go:

1. executives get paid more. It is no linear progression, but something more like an exponential curve. There are many, many Belarusians on 30 grand, only ten executive board members on five million a piece.
2. the proportion of your time spent on line management increases — we take this to be a trivial observation: the contractor at the call centre in Belarus has no direct reports, so soends no time managing; the CEO ultimately has every direct report, so does almost nothing but line managing.
3. the purpose of your upward line management shifts: the Belarusian contractor who arrived from the jobcentre in Minsk in knows nothing: his interaction with his manager is almost completely substantive, functional and necessary: the chief operating officer has been at the firm forty years, knows its every idiosyncracy and foible; her interaction with her live manager is almost entirely formal: when she presents issues to her boss she should know the answers as well as her boss will