The Last Days of the Managerial Class
https://eyeofthesquid.com/the-last-days-of-the-managerial-class-5c95bd74ee60
The Last Days of the Managerial Class
https://eyeofthesquid.com/the-last-days-of-the-managerial-class-5c95bd74ee60
11 Comments
Submission statement:
This analysis explores how AI is fundamentally restructuring America’s professional hierarchies and elite formation pathways. As AI systems become capable of performing much of the coordination, analysis, and synthesis work that traditionally justified management roles, we’re witnessing the collapse of the consulting to MBA to management pipeline that has defined professional success for decades.
The future implications are significant: we may be transitioning from a credential-based elite to one based on technical expertise and measurable output. This mirrors historical elite transitions like Britain’s Industrial Revolution, where merchant classes displaced landed gentry over generations.
Put another way; managers are being expected to do a bunch of domain specific work that they previously didn’t.
Most managers suck, in my experience. Would I prefer to answer to an AI boss instead of a shitty manager? In most cases, yes. But I don’t think I’d be giving it my all and I probably wouldn’t feel super satisfied with my work life in general.
Meanwhile, there are good managers who somehow motivate me to try harder and be my best for the sake of my own accomplishment and personal happiness. I don’t think that person can ever be replaced by a robot.
Maybe the way forward is to focus on making human managers better, possibly with the help and support of AI? It’s an interesting problem.
Managers will use AI to try and eliminate employees first. Partly from fear of getting the same treatment eventually.
They will scratch and claw and bite. They will throw as many people under the bus as they can.
this would actually be devastating to local economies.
one middle manager living in a big house making $200k/year hires a *lot* of people in his local community. daycare providers for his kid, the hairdresser who does his wife’s extensions, his pool guy, his landscaper, the lawn guy who applies fertilizer, everyone who works at the specialty grocery store he shops at… I hate useless managers as much as the next person, but if this class of people were to shrink or disappear it would be very bad
“Consider the traditional consulting analyst, whose job involves gathering information, creating PowerPoint presentations, and synthesizing insights for clients. ”
Consider that a consulting analyst isn’t a management position, so rather a weird primary example?
A true leader leads from within, not from above. Managers are paper pushers, and we have tools readily available to do that for us.
Everyone hates middle managers and MBAs until they are gone and your job is 100% decided by a computer algorithm. I can guarantee an AI manager will be 100% ruthless with your workload and performance. I have seen how companies have tried to track performance 100% via data and it never turned out well.
As other people mentioned, there are bad managers….but there are also a lot of bad employees. Managers that have empathy and nuance and able to deal with complex people issues are essential in a good company.
I think the Reddit bubble unfortunately makes it seem like everyone is a perfect worker that just makes inputs in-front of a computer without any supervision needed. Surprisingly most jobs need managers to coordinate situations, deal with HR situations, and project management among other things (some things could be automated).
“It rewards people who can build things, not just manage them.”
This is somewhat glossed over in the article but what happens when (not if) AI agents get really good at building things? The management of those agents, relationship maintenance, and capital ownership become the only projectable white-collar jobs. The idea of compensation will change one way or another because there’s going to be a gap in the economy’s demand for labor and consumer demand for basic goods.
The biggest issue is that we still need the governance, controls and quality output, ai has been terrible at providing this layer as are the majority of middle managers though. Leadership roles will pivot to people that are able to focus on building these skills that enable workers around them to work more efficiently.
Middle managers that are technically minded and have little to no leadership abilities has always been the bane of corporate life.
Strange that everybody in this thread wants to find a way to save the human manager after this article explained why we don’t need them – honestly, the conditions for worker cooperatives feel better (and more necessary) than ever. Why have some MBA with no real technical know how telling you what your deadlines are, when the workers can organize amongst themselves and use the AI tools they now have to cut out the middleman and manage their own organization?