关于白领战争升级的非正式指南，将办公室冲突比作军事冲突。它借鉴了核战略家赫尔曼·卡恩（Herman Kahn）的冲突升级阶梯模型，来描绘从微小分歧到全面冲突的步骤。办公室冲突从简单的“分歧点”开始，逐步升级到使用日益正式和古怪的语言，这标志着关系的疏远和敌意的测试。更高层次的升级涉及立场的强硬化和“展示武力”，例如在电子邮件中抄送（cc）上级，这象征着部门力量的展示，直到最终达到“断交”的僵局或导致终止（Termination）。
Bartleby
A short guide to white-collar warfare
白领战争简短指南
How office rows escalate
办公室冲突如何升级
▶ 英文段落：
MIDDLE MANAGERS never have it easy. Subordinates resent them for climbing the corporate ladder. The top brass blame them when company strategy fails. In the popular mind they personify corporate bloat; they are the stuff of satire rather than respect. Stress and burn-out are their lot.
▶ 中文翻译：
中层管理者从来都不容易。下属们嫉妒他们爬上企业阶梯。当公司战略失败时，高层领导会责怪他们。在大众心目中，他们是公司臃肿的化身；他们是讽刺对象，而非受人尊敬的角色。压力和倦怠是他们的常态。
▶ 英文段落：
But lately they have had an especially hard time. Lots of them are losing their jobs. In August Google said it had cut 35% of its managers overseeing teams of fewer than three. In September Fiverr, a freelancing marketplace, said it would shed managers to focus more on artificial intelligence (AI). Amazon has been trimming all year in its effort to improve efficiency—most recently in July, at its cloud-computing arm. Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg has been complaining about “managers managing managers” since 2023.
▶ 中文翻译：
但最近他们过得特别艰难。许多人正在失业。8月份，谷歌表示已裁减了35%负责管理少于三人团队的经理。9月份，自由职业者平台Fiverr表示将裁减经理以更专注于人工智能（AI）。亚马逊全年都在努力提高效率——最近一次是在7月份，在其云计算部门。Meta的马克·扎克伯格自2023年以来一直抱怨“经理管经理”的问题。
▶ 英文段落：
And that’s just in tech. So far this year phrases relating to “reducing management layers” have been mentioned 98 times on the earning calls of companies in S&P’s global stockmarket index, twice as often as in the whole of 2022. The list includes UBS, a Swiss bank; Reckitt Benckiser, a British consumer-goods company; and Air Liquide, a French maker of industrial gases. What is behind this bout of “unbossing”?
▶ 中文翻译：
这还仅仅是在科技行业。今年迄今为止，与“减少管理层级”相关的短语在标普全球股市指数公司财报电话会议中被提及了98次，是2022年全年提及次数的两倍。这份名单包括瑞士银行瑞银集团（UBS）、英国消费品公司利洁时（Reckitt Benckiser）以及法国工业气体制造商液化空气集团（Air Liquide）。这场“去中心化”浪潮背后隐藏着什么？
▶ 英文段落：
One explanation is simply that in an uncertain economic environment, companies are cutting costs. Surveys of executives (for example, by the Atlanta Fed and the Bank of England) suggest that many of them plan to lower hiring overall and invest less. Among other causes, they are struggling to fathom President Donald Trump’s ever-changing tariff regime.
▶ 中文翻译：
一个解释很简单，即在不确定的经济环境中，公司正在削减成本。对高管的调查（例如，由亚特兰大联邦储备银行和英格兰银行进行的调查）表明，许多高管计划全面减少招聘并减少投资。除此之外，他们还在努力理解唐纳德·特朗普总统不断变化的关税制度。
▶ 英文段落：
Another reason has its roots in the pandemic. When covid-19 first struck, companies furloughed staff. That was followed by a hiring spree as firms, particularly in tech, raced to meet demand for e-commerce and digital services. New managers were needed to supervise the new staff. At the same time, firms were overpromoting people. In a bid to hold on to good employees, companies gave them management positions, even if they were in charge of only one or two subordinates, notes Bryan Hancock of McKinsey, a consultancy. Managers’ ranks swelled. America’s Bureau of Labour Statistics tracks 425 broad categories of occupation. Between 2019 and 2024 five of the ten fastest-growing were management roles.
▶ 中文翻译：
另一个原因则根植于疫情。当新冠疫情首次暴发时，公司让员工休假。紧随其后的是一轮招聘热潮，尤其是在科技公司，它们竞相满足电子商务和数字服务需求。需要新的经理来监督新员工。与此同时，公司过度提拔员工。麦肯锡咨询公司的布莱恩·汉考克指出，为了留住优秀员工，公司给予他们管理职位，即使他们只负责一两个下属。管理者的队伍因此膨胀。美国劳工统计局跟踪了425个广泛的职业类别。在2019年至2024年间，增长最快的十个职业中，有五个是管理职位。
▶ 英文段落：
Now companies are shedding the excess. Figures from Live Data Technologies, a research firm, show that since November 2022, when the covid hiring-binge peaked, listed American firms have cut middle-management positions by around 3% on average. Numbers of non-managerial staff have fallen similarly. But tech and health-care companies, which stepped up hiring during the pandemic, have cut middle managers faster than they have cut other staff. Other sectors struck hard by covid, such as retail, have shed a large share of the rank and file as well as their supervisors.
▶ 中文翻译：
现在公司正在裁撤冗余。研究公司 Live Data Technologies 的数据显示，自2022年11月新冠疫情招聘狂潮达到顶峰以来，美国上市公司平均裁减了约3%的中层管理职位。非管理人员的数量也出现了类似的下降。但科技和医疗保健公司在疫情期间加大了招聘力度，裁减中层管理人员的速度快于裁减其他员工。其他受疫情严重打击的行业，如零售业，也裁减了大量普通员工及其主管。
▶ 英文段落：
What about the supposed new job-eater, AI? Plenty of firms, including Amazon and Walmart, are both talking up their use of the technology and firing managers. But the cull seems to have little connection to ChatGPT. The Economist compared Live Data Technologies’ headcount figures by sector with data from the Business Trends and Outlook Survey, a poll by the Census Bureau, an American government agency. The poll asks firms, among other things, whether they have used AI in the past two weeks. The analysis did not reveal any relationship between AI use and delayering.
▶ 中文翻译：
那么，假想中的新就业杀手——人工智能呢？包括亚马逊和沃尔玛在内的许多公司都在大谈其技术应用，同时也在裁减经理。但此次裁员似乎与ChatGPT关系不大。《经济学人》将Live Data Technologies按行业分类的人员数量数据与美国政府机构人口普查局的一项调查《商业趋势与展望调查》的数据进行了比较。该调查询问公司（除其他事项外）在过去两周是否使用过人工智能。分析并未揭示人工智能使用与去层级化之间存在任何关系。
▶ 英文段落：
That may eventually change. For a long time technology has been taking over some management tasks, from disseminating information to monitoring workers. According to a survey by McKinsey, managers spend about a quarter of their time on administrative tasks. These too seem open to disruption.
▶ 中文翻译：
这种情况最终可能会改变。长期以来，技术一直在接管一些管理任务，从信息传播到员工监控。根据麦肯锡的一项调查，管理者约有四分之一的时间花在行政任务上。这些任务也似乎有可能被颠覆。
▶ 英文段落：
But in the interim AI may be the middle manager’s friend. Raffaella Sadun of Harvard Business School notes that effective middle managers can boost the uptake of corporate training, notably at companies trying to persuade staff to use the new technology. If companies want workers to swot up on AI, they may be well advised to hold on to their middle managers for just a little longer.
▶ 中文翻译：
但在此期间，人工智能可能是中层管理者的朋友。哈佛商学院的拉斐拉·萨敦指出，高效的中层管理者可以促进公司培训的采纳，尤其是在那些试图说服员工使用新技术的公司。如果公司希望员工钻研人工智能，那么他们最好再保留一段时间的中层管理者。
