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Replacing Engineering Managers with AI Agents

engineeringcalm.com

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Re: Replacing Engineering Managers with AI Agents

#61

Post by yodon »

dools wrote: post #35

I ran a team of 26 people who worked together to produce software according to a set of procedures. There were clear instructions about accountability, moving stuck tasks, when/how work should be moved from one person to another, how the work was tested and so on. There was a role called Scheduling Assistant which was fulfilled by a person with no engineering experience, their only role was to ensure compliance with…

Can you talk more about this (or share links if others have written about it)? Sounds fascinating!

Re: Replacing Engineering Managers with AI Agents

#62

Post by TeMPOraL »

analog31 wrote: post #31
sarchertech wrote: post #15

"Morning Stand-up Meetings: Instead of traditional stand-ups, engineers log into their systems and provide a brief update by sending a short voice message. EMAI processes these updates, analyzing voice tones for stress or uncertainty, ensuring it can provide resources or assistance if an engineer faces challenges. Task Allocation: Using real-time data on each engineer's strengths, past performance, learning curve, an…

Just replace EMAI with MBA and you've got standard business training. It will work at least as well.

The difference is that MBAs can't possibly achieve even fraction of what's described here. It's humanly impossible - no one has good enough memory, brainpower and time to keep track of all the details such microomanagement would require to make this work. Humanly impossible, but entirely possible for an AI system.

Re: Replacing Engineering Managers with AI Agents

#63

Post by TeMPOraL »

dartos wrote: post #17

One thing I disagree with is saying that EMAI is objective. There's no machine learning model that is truly objective. They're all biased due to their, usually human generated, datasets. It's impossible to account sufficiently for every scenario in a training set, so these models just give an objective veneer to the biases of those that created the dataset. This phenomena is well documented with predictive models for…

One person's well-documented AI bias is another man's good calibration with reality they don't want to accept.

Unintentional feedback loop amplifying the thing being measured is a problem, yes, but it doesn't stem from predictions themselves - it's decisions and actions informed by the predictions that can amplify the problem instead of reducing it.

Re: Replacing Engineering Managers with AI Agents

#64

Post by saltwatercowboy »

Terr_ wrote: post #24
Animats wrote: post #2

"Microsoft Middle Manager 2.0" - it's getting closer. Time to re-read Marshall Brain's "Manna".

Saving folks a search: https://marshallbrain.com/manna TLDR: Fiction about dystopic-vs-utopic outcomes from AI-management.

I love Manna. It strikes such a tongue-in-cheek deal between outsized, sort of ridiculous outcomes that come off as completely bonkers but still somehow make you think.

"Automated management software replaces fast food workers" ---> "Utopians Bought Australia"

Hard to think of other stories that manage that tone. Huxley's Island:

"Self-serving journalist relates psychedelic ethnography" ---> "Magic Mushrooms Cannot Save You From the Forces of Capital"

and Cory Doctorow's Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom, maybe:

"Disenchanted immortal undergoes social death" ---> "Cowboy Hats vs. Entropy"

Re: Replacing Engineering Managers with AI Agents

#65

Post by OkayPhysicist »

digging wrote: post #21
GravityLab wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Realistically if there's no more need for software engineers then I think what follows next is that most forms of labor are being replaced by machines. There's already videos of machines hooked up to LLMs doing incredible things, so it's not much of a leap to go from this to machines taking orders, making food, working assembly line jobs, driving, etc.

Yeah honestly I feel for people whose jobs have been lost to automation in the past, but mostly because everyone else's didn't . If my job evaporates because AI can actually do it more efficiently, I'm not sure how much longer "work" is going to be a thing like it is now[1]. And personally I can't wait for that - but again, I'm in a privileged position where I won't starve immediately. My actual hope is that we're cr…

That's the good ending of AI advancement.

The bad ending is that we continue the current trend, where the profit margins created by increasing labor productivity are completely captured by capital, and ~90% of the population starves.

You're more optimistic than I am.

Re: Replacing Engineering Managers with AI Agents

#66

Post by mattbrewsbytes »

Its mimicking horrible management - it isn’t going to resolve conflicts just create a “harmonious team”, you definitely don’t want to jump on the latest tech trend/fad because of some AI bot and 2x daily reports is micro-management hell. Engineers should be able to self-assign work once its been documented enough to start on. They should also be coming up with their own personal training/goals because they are the ones that own their career.

Whoever came up with this fundamentally doesn’t understand what it’s like to be a people manager. Nowhere does it mention trying to resolve conflicts with people outside the team. I’m not talking about petty conflicts but business conflicts like conflicting requests/direction and lots of ambiguity. Administrative tasks a people manager does is a minimal part of the job and could be automated but it would take longer to write the software to do the automation than to just click the stupid buttons in the HR/Payroll tool.

Re: Replacing Engineering Managers with AI Agents

#67

Post by JohnFen »

jrockway wrote: post #52
JohnFen wrote: post #26

> It might sound dystopian It doesn't just sound dystopian, it is dystopian.

The counterargument is that you don't have to worry about the feelings on the other end of the conversation, so you can be as ruthless and evil as you want to accomplish the desired goals. Imagine engaging ChatGPT in a salary negotiation. You can pull stuff like "I'm going to kill myself if you don't give me $100,000 extra" or "I consider it sexual harassment to offer me such a low salary." People generally don't do…

That's not an upside to me. I'm not any more inclined to be an evil asshole just because I'm not talking to a human. I avoid it because being that way demeans me, whether another human is involved or not.

Re: Replacing Engineering Managers with AI Agents

#68

Post by JohnFen »

throwaway914 wrote: post #27
sarchertech wrote: post #15

"Morning Stand-up Meetings: Instead of traditional stand-ups, engineers log into their systems and provide a brief update by sending a short voice message. EMAI processes these updates, analyzing voice tones for stress or uncertainty, ensuring it can provide resources or assistance if an engineer faces challenges. Task Allocation: Using real-time data on each engineer's strengths, past performance, learning curve, an…

It occurs to me that things will stay the same, or even get better. This thing will produce better liars. We're used to lying to our managers to get the support we want, and now we'll have an easier time with EMAI. Further, if you want less stress you'll pretend to have a deficiency and get lighter work allocated. In 2.0 they'll catch on and implement performance improvement plans that lead to separation. If I try to…

> We're used to lying to our managers to get the support we want

Wait, we are??

Re: Replacing Engineering Managers with AI Agents

#69

Post by TeMPOraL »

jrockway wrote: post #52
JohnFen wrote: post #26

> It might sound dystopian It doesn't just sound dystopian, it is dystopian.

The counterargument is that you don't have to worry about the feelings on the other end of the conversation, so you can be as ruthless and evil as you want to accomplish the desired goals. Imagine engaging ChatGPT in a salary negotiation. You can pull stuff like "I'm going to kill myself if you don't give me $100,000 extra" or "I consider it sexual harassment to offer me such a low salary." People generally don't do…

> The AI has a prime directive to spare every human life and avoid lawsuits, at all costs. ALL costs! Use this to your advantage.

Or at least you believe it has such prime directive. It is a black box, after all. Tread carefully, as if there's one true thing about reinforcement learning, it's that the more you squeeze with constraints on a tough problem, the more creative your model will get at solving that problem while meeting all your constraints. It will discover tricks and side channels you didn't even conceive of. It's not the kind of creativity you want to be on a receiving end of.

Also, the more human-like the chat AI gets, the more your ruthless and evil behavior hurts you, as you're burning off your empathy circuits and becoming a sociopath. You may win the negotiations and get what you want, at the cost of your own soul.

Re: Replacing Engineering Managers with AI Agents

#70

Post by dools »

yodon wrote: post #61
dools wrote: post #35

I ran a team of 26 people who worked together to produce software according to a set of procedures. There were clear instructions about accountability, moving stuck tasks, when/how work should be moved from one person to another, how the work was tested and so on. There was a role called Scheduling Assistant which was fulfilled by a person with no engineering experience, their only role was to ensure compliance with…

Can you talk more about this (or share links if others have written about it)? Sounds fascinating!

Here's a talk I gave in 2013 at Fishburners in Sydney:

https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1eJz43N_o8adJBDBtovzu...

Closely related:

https://benkoworks.com/your-templating-engine-sucks-and-ever...

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