Is there such a thing as what I described in the title or is it just my imagination/biased thinking?
I am only talking about tech orgs in a company and not other sectors like marketing, HR or sales. Feels like hiring individual contributors is still going on but there is a lot of managers/directors looking for jobs. Are there any stats that give a percentage breakdown of the layoffs?
If so, which level in the management is safer relatively speaking, if there is such a thing?
If a company decides to shutter a product or division, everyone might get laid off, from ground workers to middle management and even directors. If a company performs overall layoffs, it's going to lay off primarily from wherever they've overhired. One company might have overhired developers, another company might have overhired middle management, while a third company might have overhired sales.
Companies are generally trying to be pretty rational in only hiring positions that are required for the company to run/grow. Obviously they get this wrong all the time, but I'm not aware of any evidence they get this wrong more often about middle management.
I know there's a whole trope about middle management being useless, how you could cut it entirely and the company would still run just fine, but nothing could be further from the truth. A VP can't have 120 direct reports. There's no way for them to get the information they need to make good decisions, nor is there any way for their direct reports to get the information they need to make good decisions. It just doesn't scale.