> The 35% reduction refers to the number of managers who oversee fewer than three people, according to a person familiar with the matter. Many of those managers stayed with the company as individual contributors
So a lot of these people weren't actually managers, but engineers without a manager.
But if you do have a "manager" who only oversees one or two other people, that does seem like an unnecessary layer -- unless that "manager" is actually a full-time dev who just happens to have a "manager" title tacked on.
The unanswered question is whether they eliminated the _people_ or just eliminated the "manager" _titles_.