Orwell vs. Burnham: the original middle-management cage match

If eMarketer is right, the 2028 org chart will feature more interns than directors—and that’s not a typo.

Four-panel org-chart timeline: current structure, eMarketer’s GenAI projection, my two-year hybrid org with doubled GenAI VPs, and five-year horizon where GenAI VP roles replace most middle managers.

I just binge-read their GenAI workflow series. Instead of feeling inspired, I came away staring at the shallow grave they’ve dug for middle management—and, by extension, the middle class.

The chart is bleak

A technocratic regime with the CTO as puppet master, GenAI agents as deputies, and every other C-level role dimmed to a ghost light. Strip out the lieutenants and the rungs beneath them splinter, too. Farewell, director class; hello, hollow org.

Nearly a century ago, James Burnham’s Managerial Revolution argued that a rising caste of professional managers would seize the levers of capitalism. Forget owners vs. workers—meet the spreadsheet aristocracy, promoted by merit, driven by self-interest, destined (he claimed) to run the machine. George Orwell called nonsense. In “Second Thoughts on James Burnham,” he warned that unchecked capitalism funnels power upward—to oligarchs, not foremen.

“Power worship blurs political judgment,” he wrote. Still true, still tattoo-worthy.

So who “wins” in the GenAI era?

Burnham sees an expanded managerial tier: goodbye VPs, hello armies of prompt engineers.

Orwell sees a reshuffle that fattens the C-suite while the rest of us play musical chairs.

Frankly, neither looks like a victory parade.

The new chessboard

The Queen — legacy C-suite and boards. Vision and veto stay at the top. If GenAI lets them oversee more domains, expect the ranks (and pay packets) to swell.

The Pawns — orchestrators, prompt-smiths, workflow wranglers. We promised practitioners less time at the keyboard; instead we may spawn a whole new legion of keyboard-clackers. Not all pawns are identical—but they’re still pawns.

The Rooks and Knights — experienced operators. Thinned out as everyone scrambles to become Queen, then tumbles back into the pit of despair (yes, Princess Bride fits). Picture Brazil: two managers tugging the same desk from opposite sides of a wall—literal and metaphorical.

Wage compression and the vanishing middle

With director roles evaporating, we flirt with Burnham’s world: a low ceiling and a wide floor. In many U.S. markets, a seasoned director can sit around ~$150K; early “GenAI lead” roles are already priced in that neighborhood. Title inflation without pay growth compresses the ladder. Where, exactly, is the middle?

From org charts to nations

As power consolidates upward, political class + tech class = one class, and managers are reduced or replaced by a cheaper, more “efficient” worker caste, the picture gets uglier. Access to advanced tools becomes a class divider. Countries without that access fall behind and not incrementally, but structurally.

I paused this draft after the GPT-5 announcement to sanity-check with friends on the front lines. The tech keeps leaping; the human guardrails do not.

The question isn’t if—it’s how

Theory is secondary if we dodge the boring but essential stuff: regulation, accountability, and equitable deployment. If the future looks less like a chessboard and more like a beehive, who picks the bees? Who assigns the jobs? Who gets to wear the crown?

I like to think I steer my own career. But do pawns really have equal paths to become queens? And how many rungs remain on the ladder by the time they try?

Generative AI, Future of Work, Organizational Design, Management, Middle Class, Labor Economics, Technology Ethics, Marketing Strategy, AI Governance, Automation, Inequality, Sociology of Work, George Orwell, James Burnham.