Excess management is costing the U.S. $3T per year (2016)
In both public sector and private sector places I have worked, management usually was, at best, dead weight.  More often than not, management was an active impediment of getting work done for the ordinary worker doing the actual productive work of the institution.At one place, a director and the VP she reported to both retired.  A temporary director was hired under contract who was mostly hands-off (and remote), but she immediately fired the manager who was her direct report.  The group I worked in had reported to the fired manager.Without managers, productivity soared.  We literally got more accomplished in a year without managers than we did in the prior five years combined.  All of our deferred maintenance issues, some dating back over a decade, were addressed in the first 6 months of being freed of the managers.Sadly, it didn't last.  They re-hired the full hierarchy of positions.  And, the pace of work ground to a halt.  Quality of work also suffered due to the artificial deadlines imposed by the managers-- combined with their shifting priorities based on which other manager(s) it was most politically expedient for them to please on any given day.At another, the new VP of marketing said in a meeting, about 9 months into his tenure, "What?! We're a software company?"  Imagine all the value he must have added for those prior nine months.