• Companies are now considering hiring humans to manage AI agents.
• Companies are using AI agents, which autonomously handle tasks, to improve workflows.
• Managing agents may need less experience than managing humans, but more technical skill.

Back in 2023, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg made an observation about his company:

“I don’t think you want a management structure that’s just managers managing managers, managing managers, managing managers, managing the people who are doing the work,” he said during a company Q&A session, The Verge reported at the time.

Then came the great flattening. Companies from Meta to Citi began to cull their ranks of middle managers.

Now, the AI age is offering a new twist to the story of middle management.

“I think you’re just going to see a different modality within a company, which is an agent manager,” Jeanne DeWitt Grosser, the chief operating officer at Vercel, told Business Insider.

Agents have become one of the central innovations of 2025. They’re commonly defined as virtual assistants that can complete tasks autonomously. They break down problems, outline plans, and take action without being prompted by a user.

Companies are racing to implement them to help them work faster. Vercel, a $9.3 billion cloud-based developer platform founded in 2015, recently trained an AI agent on its best-performing sales representative. The machine is so effective that the company downsized its 10-person sales team to a single top performer and moved the remaining nine to a different team.

Managing a team of agents requires different skills from managing a team of people.

“You have to understand where you want to go, what the North Star is, what excellence looks like, and be able to explain that to someone,” Grosser said about managing people. It’s a job that typically requires years of experience and a healthy dose of tact.

Becoming an AI agent manager might have a lower barrier to entry, though it requires different technical skills.

“The future is you might graduate from college and you’re a manager now,” she said. “We’re all going to have to learn to delegate, to break down tasks, etcetera, to produce the type of output that you want from your agent teammate.”

Grosser didn’t say whether Vercel will be posting a job like this anytime soon, but said it’s something the company is “contemplating.”

Last month, Jason Lemkin, founder of SaaStr.com, an online community for founders of SaaS and B2B companies, posted on LinkedIn that the first $200,000 sales development representative role is “coming.”

The job involves managing “10+ AI SDR agents” and requires a candidate to be “pretty technical,” he wrote.

Saurabh Sarbaliya, the chief technology officer and AI lead at PwC, told Business Insider that companies will likely try to train their existing workforce to take on this kind of role before recruiting external candidates.

“I need our existing workforce to be able to become agent managers,” he said. “We need to be able to actually go and up-skill our people on how to actually go and become good agent managers,” he said.

Good agent managers should be able to train agents, give them context, review their behavior, and design workflows that are very “intentional,” he said. That includes requiring an agent to consult a human before it goes on to execute specific actions, he said.

Gabi McCord paces her kitchen. Crayon drawings are pinned to the fridge, shelves are cluttered with picture frames, and little shoes sit on a rack near the door. She stirs together pancake mix, heavy cream, and a heaping spoonful of cinnamon. Then she puts bite-sized pieces on her baby’s high chair tray and drizzles maple syrup on the stacks for the older two.

It’s a scene so ordinary it’s hard to imagine how fragile it is. And how quickly a diagnosis would shift everything.

Whenever I call Gabi, it’s often in moments like this, with her kids giggling on the other side of the line.

“Go watch ‘Paw Patrol’ with your brother. I’m making us something to eat.”

“Shhhh, babe. Mommy’s on the phone.”

“I love you, too.”

Gabi’s last few years have been a whirlwind — a surprise pregnancy, cancer at 35, treatment, recovery, motherhood, marriage, work, and an uncertain path forward. At each spare moment, she tells her “little bears” that she loves them. She makes sure they know it.

“I missed out on bonding with my son after he was born. There was a moment recently that I remember looking at him and bursting out in tears, like, ‘You’re my baby, You’re mine,'” Gabi, now 37, said. “Cancer meant that certain things didn’t quite register, and life was happening around me. I was sitting down in a cinema watching myself. Now I’m pressing the pause button and looking at each scene.”

Business Insider has spent a year reporting on the true cost of a cancer diagnosis for young Americans. Cancer cases are rising for people in their 20s, 30s, and 40s, derailing finances and future plans at a pivotal stage of life. Dozens of patients have told us they’re navigating relationships, fertility decisions, early parenthood, and career growth alongside treatment. They’re paying medical bills and for all the unexpected costs along the way.

But young cancer doesn’t just affect patients. The weight on loved ones and caregivers is heavy. Gabi’s diagnosis ricocheted across the lives of her husband, sister, cousin, and children. It’s a shared experience for millions of American families, and there’s no playbook on how to get through it.

Gabi was at a routine check-up near her Houston home when the gynecologist first mentioned that something looked off. The results of her 2023 Pap smear, along with weeks of pelvic pain and spotting between periods, had raised concern for cancer.

During a follow-up that spring, the doctor noticed changes to her cervix and paused mid-exam. Before they could do further diagnostics, she needed to take a pregnancy test.

The morning blurred after that. Gabi remembers stepping into a Walgreens as rain poured across the parking lot. She stood in the family planning aisle, whispering a prayer, and reached for an electronic test — the ones that spell out PREGNANT in big, unmistakable letters. It was an extra $3, but it felt worth the splurge.

For nine months after that positive test, Gabi and her husband, Johnathon Shufford, lived in a kind of suspended reality. She has three teenagers from a prior relationship, and this would be her third baby with Johnathon. The couple prepared a nursery for their youngest child, picked a name, and held on to hope — counting down the weeks until doctors could safely perform a biopsy to find out if she had cancer.

In December 2023, they welcomed a healthy baby boy. He was barely 2 months old when Gabi had a cervical cone, a procedure that confirmed her diagnosis of stage 3C1 cervical cancer. He had just hit 4 months when she returned to the hospital for a radical hysterectomy and lymph node dissection.

That’s when things became real for Johnathon. He remembers shifting from newborn pediatrician visits to the oncology ward. “It’s very scary when you think about losing your wife,” he said. The daily nerves he had during Gabi’s pregnancy grew into a crushing devastation that he tried to hide. “I didn’t want her to see me down.”

At first, the couple clung to routines — grocery runs, laundry, baby bottles. Gabi would wake up early to drop off their daughter and older son at day care on her way to the office, where she worked in insurance sales. Johnathon would pick them up each afternoon and get them settled at home before his evening shift as a truck driver. Her two rounds of chemotherapy and six rounds of radiation were tucked into the family schedule.

But it grew harder to relish the sweet moments of normalcy, and costs were piling up. Numbers came one by one, and were rarely dramatic on their own: $48 for each can of formula because breastfeeding during chemo wasn’t safe; $30-plus copays for each visit to the oncologist, OBGYN, or neurologist; $13 for each bottle of Advil; and $2.80 for each gallon of gas burned driving back and forth to the doctor. Each expense felt small until it wasn’t — until the sum began to look like a diagnosis they couldn’t afford to treat. Even with insurance, the medical bills totaled thousands and thousands of dollars. Gabi winced when she paid $60 for the occasional manicure to feel like herself.

Those receipts mirror what researchers are documenting nationwide. Medical debt is a top cause of bankruptcy in the US, and a GoodRx analysis with Business Insider found that working-age cancer patients can spend about $45,000 out-of-pocket in the first year of diagnosis, between treatment, lost wages, fertility care, and unexpected costs. It’s the hidden math of survival: how even insured people like Gabi watch cancer quietly drain their wallets.

Many newly diagnosed cervical cancer patients are balancing motherhood alongside work and treatment, said Dr. Andrea Tufano-Sugarman, a gynecologic oncologist at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center. Cases are rising for women in their 30s and 40s, she said, and “I try to brainstorm with my patients what they might need in terms of getting childcare, dinner, and the logistics of all that.”

For Gabi, treatment was extracting its own tax. Beyond fatigue and nausea, she was going through early menopause, and feeling hot all the time made it harder to hold her kids. She struggled to fall asleep at night, prepare meals, drive to the office, and manage the rhythm of the household.

When she developed peripheral neuropathy in late 2024, a side effect of radiation that caused numbness and nerve damage, she could barely celebrate that her cancer scans were clear. She could no longer feel her legs, and doctors couldn’t predict if the paralysis would be permanent. Johnathon carried his wife up and down the stairs of their second-floor rental apartment each time they went outside. She resigned from her insurance job soon after.

Whenever he had a question, Johnathon watched YouTube. He asked the search bar how to cook easy dinner recipes, properly fold a wheelchair, and style his toddlers’ hair in the morning. He had quickly become the sole earner and primary parent, and his own mental health started to crumble.

“When your spouse gets cancer, it’s almost like you have it too,” he said. “You may not have it physically, but mentally, if you truly love your spouse, there’s going to be a lot of times that you feel really bad.”

The kids — who are now 1, 4, and 6 — are too little to understand cancer and the gravity of it all. That brings Gabi some relief.

When I visited Gabi in late August, she had just started walking again. She joked about her swollen feet and one of the few shoes that fit — a pair of chunky New Balance sneakers. She pointed to the compression device she uses for her legs and the glittery hot-pink wheelchair folded in the corner of her bedroom.

As we drove to get lunch through Houston’s heat, the conversation turned to paperwork. Getting a blue disability permit for her car has taken months and a stack of forms thicker than her medical file. She said she constantly has to prove to the government, insurance company, and strangers that she still needs it.

“I style my hair and wear makeup and stuff, and I do it to feel good. But the flip side of that is that people seeing me don’t believe me,” Gabi sighed. That’s part of why she still keeps her wheelchair folded in the trunk because “it’s really hard when people can’t see your disability.”

When he needed help the most, Johnathon said Candice Julien and Chineva Smith — Gabi’s sister and cousin — were “angels.”

“The patient isn’t the only person that goes through this traumatic experience,” Chineva said. “Hope was literally the size of a mustard seed, just pulling us through.”

Candice, a 34-year-old federal employee in Maryland, flew cross-country twice a month to hold Gabi’s hand and sent care packages when she couldn’t be there in person. Her two children are elementary age, so she traded off days of remote work, PTO, and childcare with her husband, often flying their kids back and forth to Texas. She’s in thousands of dollars of credit card debt from travel expenses.

Chineva is a professor in Houston. The 37-year-old, who has two teenagers, spent hundreds of dollars on groceries, baby supplies, pajamas, and car seats to make sure her young niece and nephews were comfortable. A stack of diapers still sits in the backseat of her car, “just in case.”

Throughout her treatment, Gabi said she had no idea how scared her loved ones felt. They laughed with her, prayed with her, picked up snacks from Target when they all grew tired of hospital food, and promised her everything would turn out all right. They privately worried it wouldn’t.

Seventy-five percent of cancer caregivers developed poor mental health during their loved one’s treatment and a third felt significant grief, a 2024 survey of a few hundred caregivers found. They’re at a high risk for anxiety, depression, and post-traumatic stress disorder — especially women, who shoulder most of the care load in the US. Paola Zambrana of the Caregiver Action Network emphasized that caregivers also navigate a loved one’s treatment around limited PTO, complex finances, and parenting responsibilities, which is “a part of mental health that isn’t really spoken about.”

“I’m still not OK, and honestly, I don’t think I ever will be,” Candice said, adding, “Sometimes you just have to show up.”

Cancer has shifted everyone’s plans for the future. Gabi’s scans have been clear for nearly a year, though she worries about what recurrence would mean for her family.

Her marriage has become strained; she and Johnathon started couples therapy this fall. The financial impact of cancer means they can’t afford the down payment on the house they’ve dreamed of and will spend a few more years renting. Gabi said that medical debt has also tanked her credit score. “Now we’re having a lot of conversations,” she said. “They’re very draining — I’m not going to lie — but we are having a lot of conversations and trying to navigate this.”

Gabi estimates that she owes over $20,000 in hospital fees, along with the steep price of a customized wheelchair and the exorbitant cost of life insurance for someone with a cancer history. The couple feels like they’re constantly getting new bills.

In October, Gabi returned to an insurance sales job. She worries that she won’t have enough energy for a 9-to-5, but she said she needs her own income.

Out of the chaos came a kind of clarity. If she couldn’t control her body or her bank account, she could control what came next — and how she used her story.

Gabi is pursuing a Bachelor’s degree in Public Health, with a focus on health inequities that affect communities of color. As a Black woman who felt that doctors didn’t always take seriously her concerns about pain, fertility loss, and declining mental health, she wants to help change that system.

Her sanctuary has become a garden-level room adorned with fairy lights and flowers. In this “room of peace,” Gabi prays like she does in a pew on Sundays. She wraps herself in the bubblegum pink blanket she brought to every chemo appointment and updates the family calendar with holidays, birthdays, and playdates.

“Every day, I get to wake up and hold my kids,” she said. “I try not to dwell on the shit that could have happened, but I look at my baby and my family and my husband, and I see what it would have been like if they had to walk behind my casket.”

Her family has their own ideas about moving forward. Chineva plans to write children’s books about grief and has become diligent about her own preventive health screenings. Candice hopes to live closer to her sister someday and take her on a beach vacation. Johnathon looks forward to supporting his kids’ hobbies as they grow. They still ask for cinnamon pancakes three times a week.

On the morning I visited Gabi, we stopped by the hospital for her first visit since she had relearned how to walk. She hummed along to Britney Spears while we drove down US-290.

“How are you feeling?” I asked.

“Excited, mostly,” she answered.

• This week, baristas at unionized Starbucks stores launched their fourth strike in two years.
• Flyers supporting the strike have begun quietly appearing at the company’s Seattle headquarters.
• Two corporate employees said HR urged staff to report if they see pro-union actions at work.

Dozens of pro-union flyers have appeared around Starbucks headquarters since baristas at 65 stores launched a nationwide strike — and the company is on alert for more action.

Employees say the flyers have appeared in hallways and bathroom stalls across the Seattle building this week, while some corporate workers whisper support for the baristas on strike.

The flyers first appeared just days before baristas launched a nationwide strike at dozens of stores in 40 cities to pressure the company to finalize their first union contract. The strike, which is the unionized baristas‘ fourth work stoppage in two years — and their third since Brian Niccol became CEO in September 2024 — began on Red Cup Day, an annual promotional event that offers customers a free reusable cup with their purchase and generates significant sales for the company.

“Baristas deserve better pay and staffing. SSC workers support a fair contract!” one of the flyers reads, referencing Starbucks Support Center employees, who work at the corporate headquarters office and are not unionized. It includes a logo for the Starbucks Workers United union and a link to a “solidarity pledge,” which urges supporters not to patronize Starbucks while unionized baristas are on strike.

Two corporate employees told Business Insider that during a Tuesday meeting, a member of Starbucks’ HR team instructed them to inform their team leaders if they observed other staff members taking pro-union actions at work — but not to intervene, because it could be considered “protected concerted activity.”

Protected concerted activities are legally protected for union and non-union employees and include discussions about wages, working conditions, and other employment-related matters.

A spokesperson for Starbucks declined to comment on the pro-union flyers, telling Business Insider in a statement that it’s “an exciting time to be a Starbucks partner.”

“This year’s holiday launch is breaking records, and yesterday we had our best Reusable Red Cup Day ever,” the statement said.

The flyers also took aim at Niccol’s compensation. One includes a meme which depicts a man sweating nervously as he decides which of two red buttons to push. One button reads “Raises for partners,” which is how Starbucks refers to its employees; the other button reads “$96,000,000 for Brian,” a reference to the CEO’s pay package.

Niccol’s pay package for 2024 was valued at $95,801,676, including a $61,538 base salary, $5 million signing bonus, and significant stock awards, Business Insider previously reported.

Niccol’s compensation package has been criticized for its high ratio compared to that of the average Starbucks employee. According to data collected by the American Federation of Labor (AFL) and the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO), Niccol’s pay package represents 6,666 times the median $14,674 salary of Starbucks employees, the highest disparity among companies in the S&P 500.

In August, citing cost-saving measures related to its ongoing turnaround campaign, Starbucks announced that it would give salaried employees a flat 2% pay raise across the board, rather than having managers weigh in on pay increases as they had in previous years.

Starbucks is investing $500 million in staffing, training, and support to enhance the coffeehouse experience under its Green Apron Service model, a spokesperson told Business Insider on the day the strike began.

Prior to joining Starbucks, Niccol served as chief executive of the fast-casual Mexican chain, Chipotle, where he spearheaded a turnaround campaign that saw the company’s share price soar more than eightfold.

Just over a year into his tenure at the coffee giant, Niccol’s “Back to Starbucks” initiative, which has included a $1 billion restructuring, two rounds of layoffs, and a swath of store closures, has started to gain momentum. In October’s earnings report, Starbucks said that its fourth-quarter comparable sales rose 1% globally, driven by new protein-focused drinks — the first time in seven quarters that the coffee chain has reported an increase.

Even as Starbucks touts its comeback, the company’s long-running labor fight continues to simmer.

Since 2021, more than 550 of Starbucks’ nearly 17,000 stores across the US have voted to unionize. The union said there has been an increased interest in stores joining its ranks since the September restructuring and layoffs. However, the National Labor Relations Board, which certifies union elections, has not had the minimum number of members needed to issue decisions or take formal actions since the beginning of President Donald Trump’s term in January.

The company and the union have yet to reach a first collective bargaining agreement, and negotiations have stalled for nearly a year, with both sides blaming each other. The two corporate employees told Business Insider that it is unusual for staff in the Seattle headquarters to publicly express support for the unionized in-store staff.

It’s not the first time corporate staff have pushed back on policy: Business Insider reported in July that flyers objecting to the company’s return-to-office mandate also began circulating at the Seattle headquarters.

The new pro-union flyers have been removed from some areas of the Seattle office, the employees said.

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