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by simplyluke 18 days ago
It's hard for me to not notice that the new C-level marching orders this year are that "measurement" jobs is actually what AI is killing (managers, HR, data, etc), and that seems to be an about face from IC-work being dead after the data is pretty clearly showing the opposite.

Do we not need HR and managers, or are those just more popular roles to cut and the impact takes longer to show up?
2 comments
hyperpape 18 days ago
Management is very prone to fads. The current fad is that middle management is useless. Tomorrow, they'll discover the idea that organizations can have employees "working hard" on things that no one cares about, and that someone actually needs to work on focusing that effort.

Of course, the truth is you can have too many middle managers or too few (it really was bad that in 2017, the biggest achievement was "growing headcount"). But fads have a tendency to overcorrect.

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dilyevsky 17 days ago
I'm not sure it's so much a fad rather than recognition that AI-assisted engineering calls for flatter orgs. Also "growing headcount" as management yardstick persisted way longer than 2017 - all the way into 2022 until the rates shot up.
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black6 18 days ago
Thinking that middle management is useless isn't a fad, it's an acknowledgement of reality.
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black6 16 days ago
Lotta middle managers here goofing off instead of working :D
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MagicMoonlight 18 days ago
Well from my perspective there are five different people above me, and all of the work in the project is done by me. I talk to the customer, I design and build, I manage the Jira. They don’t actually do anything. They just exist and cause drama.

They could sack all of those people and give me a payrise and be hundreds of thousands better off.

I wish I could say it’s just this project, but it’s a real theme at this point. There are so many layers of fake jobs in every organisation.

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simplyluke 17 days ago
Management bloat is definitely a thing in many companies, but there's a right level. Some number of C-level execs seem to think AI magically means the optimal structure of any company is an unlimited number of thousands of individual contributors directly under a CEO.

The thought that AI doesn't mean mass layoffs is basically unimaginable.

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