Kyle, a middle manager at a staffing company, said that a brutal combination of layoffs, fights about remote work, busywork, and burnout have made this his toughest year yet leading a team. He's not alone.

Managers like Kyle are burning out and looking for jobs more aggressively, a recent Gallup survey found. Fifty-five percent of managers are watching for or actively seeking new roles, compared to 49% of individual contributors, or non-managers, putting some managers in "survival mode."

Insider verified the identity and employment status of Kyle, who asked for partial anonymity for fear of repercussions at his workplace. Kyle said the staffing industry began seeing high-level layoffs last year and his company cracked down on remote work. His employer also implemented a hiring freeze, downsizing his team.

"We've lost a lot more tenured people, so we've had to rely on a lot more inexperienced people, plus myself as a manager having to step in," Kyle said. "I'm just trying to broker all this, keeping that management style of being really employee-centered and retention-centered, which has gotten harder and harder."

He said these losses — including offers he had to revoke — were devastating to his workflow, as he needed to take on the work he would have assigned to others, meaning he's had much less time to coach and grow his team. He called it a "nasty attrition cycle."

"It's tough to watch a team that you had built lose people who have been with me since 2017 and 2018," Kyle said, "especially when you've worked so hard to keep them in the first place."

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