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Ask HN: When will managers be replaced by AI?

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Re: Ask HN: When will managers be replaced by AI?

#51

Post by OutOfHere »

woah wrote: post #39
OutOfHere wrote: post #25

Managers are the parasitic class, so they will take the company down with them, and will never be replaced. One can however start a new firm without them and without AI. All you need is to measure commits and communications to know if someone is working and how they should be organized. It doesn't even require AI.

Who measures them and how do they judge quality?

User activity and commit activity matter. If there is no user telemetry, something is not right. If users are filing too many bugs, something is very wrong. If users are filing feature requests, that's a good sign.

Re: Ask HN: When will managers be replaced by AI?

#52

Post by Wurdan »

xingped wrote: post #20
twodave wrote: post #14

IME most managers became managers because they preferred working with and helping organize people to creative contributions. I don’t see the need for any of these functions going away. I see productivity differences. Maybe the roles evolve. I think the real question is how do we best harness the increased productivity? Logically speaking, if each person is 5x as productive because of AI there should be an equally gre…

Most managers are managers because they like having power and control. I can count the number of managers I have met on less than one hand who you can tell is a manager because they like helping and organizing people.

Well you just met another. And I can count on one hand the number of peers who I've worked with who just want power.

Re: Ask HN: When will managers be replaced by AI?

#53

Post by WithinReason »

xackpot wrote: post #48

To replace the mangers, the AI needs to take care of the following pain points (got some help from chatgpt): Hiring and Talent Acquisition: - Candidate pipeline quality is inconsistent. - Time-consuming resume screening and interview scheduling. - Lack of diverse candidate pools. Performance Management - Biased or inconsistent performance reviews. - Goal-setting lacks clarity or alignment with org OKRs. - Lack of rea…

Virtually all of these are things that humans are bad at, so to me it seems AI should easily replace management. After all the list itself was generated by AI and not even a human :)

Re: Ask HN: When will managers be replaced by AI?

#54

Post by autobodie »

zoechi wrote: post #44
autobodie wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If a company wants to stay in business, the legal risk of AI bots firing people is probably not worth the cost savings. Until that changes, I don't think there's much to discuss, but that may not be long given the way things are going.

They don't have to admit that the decision was made by AI. One low-wage worker in HR can be the spokesperson who sells it as his decision.

No law specifically requires more than a coin flip, but firing people because some rando in HR "decided" without justification or documentation of cause can be risky.

Re: Ask HN: When will managers be replaced by AI?

#56

Post by curtisblaine »

Larrikin wrote: post #9
chrisgat wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mentioned this to someone the other day, and they rebuffed that part of what you get with a CEO is their network and their ability to network. AI won't replace that, at least not anytime soon.

Why can't the board network while having the AI generate the big ideas for the last few workers?

Did you find any way to generate good ideas with AI? Anecdotally, I found it incredibly unsatisfactory in this sense. It normally re-hashes old ideas without any internal coherence, like those novelty websites combining two existing startups to create a random mission (e.g. “AirBnB for motorbikes”).

Re: Ask HN: When will managers be replaced by AI?

#57

Post by GianFabien »

chrisgat wrote: post #4
chipuni wrote: post #2

The easiest job to replace must be the CEO. Look at Musk. He's CEO of six companies (or so), yet has time to run DOGE and constantly post on X.

I mentioned this to someone the other day, and they rebuffed that part of what you get with a CEO is their network and their ability to network. AI won't replace that, at least not anytime soon.

A recent WSJ article pointed out that 50% of board members are ex-CEOs.

I think CEO networking is code for cartels & collusion.

I think it is the layers of muddle management that could easily be replaced by AI.

Re: Ask HN: When will managers be replaced by AI?

#58

Post by GianFabien »

curtisblaine wrote: post #56
Larrikin wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why can't the board network while having the AI generate the big ideas for the last few workers?

Did you find any way to generate good ideas with AI? Anecdotally, I found it incredibly unsatisfactory in this sense. It normally re-hashes old ideas without any internal coherence, like those novelty websites combining two existing startups to create a random mission (e.g. “AirBnB for motorbikes”).

When you consider that LLMs are trained on what can be scrapped from the web, the so called "creativity" comes from mashing together less commonly co-associated ideas.

Re: Ask HN: When will managers be replaced by AI?

#59

Post by t312227 »

hello,

as always: imho. ...

idk. ... what do you mean by "managers" in your question!?

in my view: the "real" task of mangers - regardless of the level, but even more if they are at a lower/mid level - is managing peoples & their expectations - either of their "team" or their superior.

and looking at the current state of "AI", i don't see much gain in using it to manage those part of "management".

but i think (current) "AI" would be a good source of "additional" decision/reasoning over the lets call it "technical parts" of mgmt ...

sure, this will change in the future, but currently i don't see much on the horizon regarding the "peoples" part of mgmt.

but in the medium/long term, i could imagine a development somewhat similar to the following:

looking at the progression of neo-liberal capitalism: using / blaming AI for unfavorable (mgmt)decisions may be a good possibility to "hide" behind said AI to enforce such "unpopular" decision.

they would have been made anyways, but using this pattern "nobody" is responsible for such developments, because "AI said so" etc...

just my 0.02€

Re: Ask HN: When will managers be replaced by AI?

#60

Post by GianFabien »

xackpot wrote: post #48

To replace the mangers, the AI needs to take care of the following pain points (got some help from chatgpt): Hiring and Talent Acquisition: - Candidate pipeline quality is inconsistent. - Time-consuming resume screening and interview scheduling. - Lack of diverse candidate pools. Performance Management - Biased or inconsistent performance reviews. - Goal-setting lacks clarity or alignment with org OKRs. - Lack of rea…

A large proportion of that list is "busy work" and not directly related to producing quality deliverables.

The industrial age management practices disregard the intelligence levels of professional levels of ICs.

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