Your comment reminds of the total surprise hierarchies of supervisors and managers had in Indian public sector companies post the 92 reforms when they discovered their jobs were not needed, or even needed to exist.
Apparently managers(of managers of managers...) suddenly came to terms with the fact that the only thing they were doing is passing memos and approving leave requests. Generally a small additional meta responsibility existed which required them to make an entry into some register(Issuing a tool to a shop worker etc).
They also realized approving leaves, passing around memos and filling tables wasn't exactly a skill set anybody was looking to hire when they were fired. Most of them were in 40s, unprepared for retirement and angry there wasn't a market for their sort of entitlement.
Additional reading:
Richard arrived in Boston the day after the company was incorporated. We had been busy raising the money, finding a place to rent, issuing stock, etc. We set up in an old mansion just outside of the city, and when Richard showed up we were still recovering from the shock of having the first few million dollars in the bank. No one had thought about anything technical for several months. We were arguing about what the name of the company should be when Richard walked in, saluted, and said, "Richard Feynman reporting for duty. OK, boss, what's my assignment?" The assembled group of not-quite-graduated MIT students was astounded.
After a hurried private discussion ("I don't know, you hired him..."), we informed Richard that his assignment would be to advise on the application of parallel processing to scientific problems.
"That sounds like a bunch of baloney," he said. "Give me something real to do."
Apparently managers(of managers of managers...) suddenly came to terms with the fact that the only thing they were doing is passing memos and approving leave requests. Generally a small additional meta responsibility existed which required them to make an entry into some register(Issuing a tool to a shop worker etc).
They also realized approving leaves, passing around memos and filling tables wasn't exactly a skill set anybody was looking to hire when they were fired. Most of them were in 40s, unprepared for retirement and angry there wasn't a market for their sort of entitlement.
Additional reading:
Richard arrived in Boston the day after the company was incorporated. We had been busy raising the money, finding a place to rent, issuing stock, etc. We set up in an old mansion just outside of the city, and when Richard showed up we were still recovering from the shock of having the first few million dollars in the bank. No one had thought about anything technical for several months. We were arguing about what the name of the company should be when Richard walked in, saluted, and said, "Richard Feynman reporting for duty. OK, boss, what's my assignment?" The assembled group of not-quite-graduated MIT students was astounded.
After a hurried private discussion ("I don't know, you hired him..."), we informed Richard that his assignment would be to advise on the application of parallel processing to scientific problems.
"That sounds like a bunch of baloney," he said. "Give me something real to do."
http://longnow.org/essays/richard-feynman-connection-machine...