There's a great scene in Douglas Adams' The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy saga; I think it was in The Restaurant at the End of the Universe. The lead characters find themselves on a spaceship full of middle-managers from the planet Golgafrincham. (No, I don't know how to pronounce Golgafrincham.)
According to the hapless, half-witted middle-managers, their home planet was doomed and they'd been sent off on this spaceship to escape certain death. The plan was to rendezvous with two other ships - one of which contained the planet's leaders and scientists, and the other containing all its useful workers.
In fact, the planet wasn't doomed and the other two ships didn't exist. It was all a scheme to rid the planet of its useless populace. And the middle-managers were clueless.
Contrary to the book's satire, middle managers are useful, especially these days. There was a time - the 80s - when bloated companies had three or four more layers of management than they needed. That was ridiculous. The great management-layer purge of the 90s took care of that.
Still, there is a stigma attached to middle-management. But is it deserved? Let's see. ... Read more
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