I have had a middle manager tell me that they where not cutting down the team, because he wanted to be a manager of 5 people, just like that.
The problem is that teams in large organizations are not run by the company owners themselves anymore, instead they are run by a middle manager whose job is to run the team.
The middle manager has no incentive to cut down too much on the team size, as that would risk his career, perceived social status, and even directly its job.
If a team of 10 all of the sudden becomes a team of 3, maybe there is no need for the middle manager anymore.
Also it does not look well on the CV to be a manager of a team of 3 instead of 10 people, so its not good for the manager career to cut down the team too much.
If the team size gets reduced a lot, the manager will be asked to do non-managerial tasks again, which would effectively mean a demotion.
> I have had a middle manager tell me that they where not cutting down the team, because he wanted to be a manager of 5 people, just like that.
Better yet: there are companies where a team needs to have at least N people in order for it to be assigned a manager. Otherwise it gets a "team leader" and several of those get assigned to a single manager.
N varies with the job, too. It can be as low as 5-6 in software development or engineering, and as high as 30-40 in administrative departments or poorly-automated production floors.
So if you cut the bullshit jobs, you also cut yours. No one does that.
How good it looks on the CV is also a factor, indeed, and often it's a barrier of entry, too. When hiring managers, many companies, including the ones that you'd think would know better, routinely demand a minimum team size, regardless of team performance. You can manage a team of 200 and run all projects into the ground and still get hired -- and yet get disappointed looks if you managed a team of 20, no matter how well it performed.
Managers offering to get their team trimmed because of lack of stuff to do is seen as a failure.
On one side the manager will be blamed for not being attached enough to its team, not being 'greedy' enough in general. On the other side the whole team will be blamed for not having come up with novel ideas and new expansion paths.
And as you say, even if the Level N manager is fine with that, it will look bad on the N+1 manager to not have a growing trend, and so-on.
The problem is that teams in large organizations are not run by the company owners themselves anymore, instead they are run by a middle manager whose job is to run the team.
The middle manager has no incentive to cut down too much on the team size, as that would risk his career, perceived social status, and even directly its job.
If a team of 10 all of the sudden becomes a team of 3, maybe there is no need for the middle manager anymore.
Also it does not look well on the CV to be a manager of a team of 3 instead of 10 people, so its not good for the manager career to cut down the team too much.
If the team size gets reduced a lot, the manager will be asked to do non-managerial tasks again, which would effectively mean a demotion.