— Rachel Kahn, temp newsletter writer 

Uber announced Wednesday it’s cutting 10% of its workforce — about 3,000 jobs. It’s the company’s biggest round of layoffs since the pandemic.

In a letter to employees, Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi said the goal of the restructuring is to create a simpler, leaner organization with fewer layers of management. As part of that, the company is broadening the scope of some managers and reducing the number of micro-teams with just one or two people on them.

In any workplace, you’ve got what organizational psychologist Bob Sutton calls grease people and gunk people.

“When you've got the wrong middle managers in the wrong places, they can gum up the works,” he said.

Sutton is a professor emeritus at Stanford University. He said the idea with cutting management layers is you get rid of the people who slow things down and battle with others for power.

But sometimes, it can be hard to know the unappreciated invisible work that middle managers do. “Like making sure the handoffs work,” Sutton said. “[Or] actually knowing who to go to to gossip to get things done.”

Cutting out the middle also sets up a problem for the future: With no one in the middle, who will ascend to the top?

Chances are, you’ve heard of the “male loneliness epidemic:” the concept that men, purportedly, are more likely to be alone or have fewer friendships. But the term is controversial, with recent research suggesting that men and women feel equally lonely.

It turns out that instead, loneliness might be much more closely related to career and the amount of money in your bank account. Kai spoke with Nick Keppler, a journalist who wrote about the topic for Slate, on the show today.

In 1926, Calvin Coolidge had coins made with his face in honor of the country’s 150th anniversary. Today, Trump follows in his footsteps. The gold-colored coins (not actual gold) feature the president’s face, and can be purchased for $61 per roll of 25 $1 coins. 

… Is he allowed to do that? Living presidents are barred from appearing on money, but Trump argues that (1) it’s for the Semiquincentennial, so is permitted under a different statute, and (2) it only features Trump on the “heads” side of the coin, rather than the “tails,” which is not forbidden under the law. 

Coolidge’s coins turned out to be a bit of a bust: The Mint issued 1 million, and ultimately had to melt down 860,000 of them due to low demand.