diff --git a/pageserver/src/tenant/mgr.rs b/pageserver/src/tenant/mgr.rs
index 4fc9d740c8..92b2200542 100644
--- a/pageserver/src/tenant/mgr.rs
+++ b/pageserver/src/tenant/mgr.rs
@@ -1719,10 +1719,11 @@ impl TenantManager {
                     parent_layers.push(relative_path.to_owned());
                 }
             }
-            debug_assert!(
-                !parent_layers.is_empty(),
-                "shutdown cannot empty the layermap"
-            );
+
+            if parent_layers.is_empty() {
+                tracing::info!("Ancestor shard has no resident layer to hard link");
+            }
+
             (parent_timelines, parent_layers)
         };