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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?

#21

Post by twodave »

sublinear wrote: post #6
oconnore wrote: post #5

No one is being replaced 1:1, but everyone is going to be downsizing (and that’s mostly the same thing). You need a lot fewer managers if your team is 5-20% what it needed to be a few years ago.

I think this is correct. Downsizing has happened many times and is a natural cycle of the business world. The hype around AI is simply the grifters opportunistically inserting themselves and clueless investors wanting to stop potential bleeding.

Yes but so far many of our technical achievements have allowed us to work more valuably, raising the standard of living for many people. There is basically no plan (in the US, at least) to replace such large portions of the workforce humanely. Are we all going to end up shoveling coal again to generate power to feed the AI?

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

#22

Post by tanelpoder »

sometimes_all wrote: post #16
tanelpoder wrote: post #10

Large corporations are full of middle-managers who do not lead anything nor produce anything (customer facing) and whose only job is to "facilitate information flow" and "pull teams together" etc. I think these roles will be replaced with AI chatbots quickly. The upside (for the company) ought to be that now the facilitation should happen very quickly and is measurable/manageable more directly. The downside (for the…

How do we know that it's these types of managers who will be replaced, instead of the ones doing the actual work?

Perhaps some companies do deeper analysis first - with AI summarizing & clustering signals from various internal systems and corporate email history. I'm not saying that this is better for everyone compared to current human-driven approaches, but the human driven approaches seem to be just about stack-ranking employees by their recent performance review ratings and drawing a red line in a spreadsheet. Amazon's recent "flattening the organization" initiative might well be using AI as one of the signals. I have no idea whether that's actually true - but then again it's 2025 and they have been a data-driven company for a long time.

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

#24

Post by rvz »

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.

> The easiest job to replace must be the CEO.

So why didn't Warren Buffet replace himself as CEO with an AI, but instead he chose a human?

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

#25

Post by OutOfHere »

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.

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

#26

Post by alexkkoo93 »

I think we need to frame this question in terms of systems, not just roles. Even in this thread, people have different definitions of manager: someone responsible for people, someone who makes decisions, someone who routes info.

So the type of management will be a big factor

Buy before Al replaces "managers," companies will (or should) rethink how their systems and workflows operate, then realign roles to match.

Instead of starting with a question of replacing roles (and some certainly will), it'll start with redefining how work gets done, and updating job descriptions accordingly.

What won't change is that employers will hire for value. So maybe while some companies would rather substitute managers with AI, I imagine many would prefer the outsized value an ai-literate manager might have

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

#27

Post by foogazi »

rvz wrote: post #24
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.

> The easiest job to replace must be the CEO. So why didn't Warren Buffet replace himself as CEO with an AI, but instead he chose a human?

Because AI is bullshit

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

#29

Post by pca006132 »

karaterobot wrote: post #15
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.

I think this is true. There was an article on HN the other day about how Moderna has already re-organized its leadership structure around AI. It makes sense to me that AI could conceivably already be as good at making the hard, data-based decisions that CEOs make, and that, therefore, they could one day be replaced by AI. Meanwhile, you've got the soft skills part of being an executive, which humans are better at (as…

Will they really get paid less? The feeling I have now is that people are paid a lot not because of what they do, but because of the potential damage they can do in case they fucked up. E.g. CEOs, lawyers, etc. Moving some of the work to AI doesn't reduce the risk, so they should have the same pay in my mental model.

Plus C-level executives typically don't lower their pay, and IMO investors apparently don't care that much about their pay, I can't see a reason why their pay will be reduced (significantly).

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

#30

Post by autobodie »

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.

The most fundamental duty of a CEO is to accept responsibility away from the board members, hence the large bonuses when they are let go. By definition, AI cannot do this. End of conversation.

Same goes for managers in most cases. Firing people because an AI said to simply won't hold ip in court, at least for now.

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