Ask HN: When will managers be replaced by AI?
40 comments
·May 20, 2025singron
I think you might not get serious responses, but I think this is an interesting question since I think AI is a better fit for management than many other jobs.
Nobody would have believed it 10 years ago, but today AI is more likely to replace a concept artist than an accountant, so it's not beyond imagination to replace a manager even if the ICs are still human.
AI excels at summarization, which is a big part of the job for a lot of managers. They gather information, go to meetings, write reports, and generally re-share information appropriate for whatever audience.
At a lot of companies, the lowest level managers don't make a lot of decisions either. Tech leads make technical decisions, PMs make product decisions, and the skip-levels (e.g. Directors, VPs) make staffing decisions.
In practice, I don't think humans will report to AIs, but hierarchies might flatten (e.g. ICs report to Directors) and responsibilities might get shuffled around (e.g. some duties get assigned to HR).
If the workers are AI-bots, then I don't really see any skill overlap with management. If you manage only AIs, you are an IC, not management.
autobodie
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.
_fzslm
> Nobody would have believed it 10 years ago, but today AI is more likely to replace a concept artist than an accountant
Do you really think so? I understand the basic sentiment of your statement but having tried to use AI for concept art, I was very disappointed at its lack of originality. Especially in an inevitably oversaturated market of AI creative work, I see the value of good human conceptual artists only rising.
bee_rider
I expect it will take a while.
Nobody really wants to decrease the number of humans in their fiefdom, right?
However, if AI actually works out and produces tools that make people, like, 5x more effective, than a software company can replace an existing one at 1/5 the cost with 1/5 the engineers. Fewer people to manage, less deep corporate tree, and maybe some of those middle layers will also use AI…
But nobody wants to decrease the size of their fiefdom, so that company will need to be built from the ground up and then wipe out the competition.
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
twodave
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 greater capacity to get things done. Businesses aren’t just running out of work to do, right?
xingped
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.
chipuni
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.
autobodie
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.
chrisgat
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.
karaterobot
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 long as the people they deal with are also humans). So, you could split that CEO role into two parts, each specializing in half of what a CEO today does. Both roles would probably do a better job than the median CEO today, and get paid less overall.
But that "not anytime soon" part is the only thing I disagree with. Because I just don't know how long the timeline is for stuff like that. It can change pretty fast.
pca006132
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).
Larrikin
Why can't the board network while having the AI generate the big ideas for the last few workers?
idkwhattocallme
CEO's typically make decisions when there isn't enough data to support the obvious direction. In this way, they are anti-pattern finders that rely on gut or some anecdotal experience. They are most often wrong, but when they are right and it's a success they are considered genius. I'm not sure an AI can make a non-obvious decision based on feeling.
protocolture
Just train it on linkedin (ew)
rvz
> 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?
surokbut
Anyone born in Buffets generation and are not rich wasn’t even getting out of bed.
A proper assessment of their skill relative to the ground truth they lived would be nice. One cannot simply walk into an office and rub elbows now. And the other half of the gender, and minorities make up a much larger part of the work force
New Deal bootstrapping then Reaganomics putting thumbs on the scales for those generations too.
His biggest asset was J&J when government was spending tons on health propaganda and grooming cause Americans used to be a bunch of greasy slobs. Oh look comb and toothbrush and mouthwash sales are staples buy buy buy then inflate through media propaganda and tax policy.
He was not a wizard.
tayo42
Probably because not all CEOs are the same, like anything people do. There's good and involved ones and other where we wonder what they're really doing.
foogazi
Because AI is bullshit
oconnore
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.
sublinear
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.
twodave
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?
throwaway282819
Replacing managers with AI was the premise of Manna: https://marshallbrain.com/manna1
tanelpoder
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 line employees) is that now your boss is a chatbot.
sometimes_all
How do we know that it's these types of managers who will be replaced, instead of the ones doing the actual work?
tanelpoder
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.
sublinear
I think the answer is obvious that nobody is being replaced by AI.
The real concern should be that telling entry level workers they need to be prompt engineering experts on top of everything else is stupid. We're only making it harder to hire the right people.
We should be focusing on whether someone can get the job done regardless of what strategies they prefer to research a solution.
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ListeningPie
A manager has responsibility for the team, how can an AI be responsible?
evdubs
A developer has responsibility for their code. How can an AI be responsible?
A writer has responsibility for their writing. How can an AI be responsible?
AI doesn't need to be responsible. It just needs to provide value, just like writers, developers, managers, etc.
ddmichael
What does responsibility mean? How does it translate to actual work and skills?
ninetyninenine
Leadership is the one doing the "replacing". They won't replace themselves. They'll replace you first.
Also there's tons of science validating how the most unqualified and unfit people make it to leadership positions. If you're a leader, most likely you're not a good one. So it's not like the industry knows a good leader when they see it. So if AI is a better manager, the industry doesn't care. It's politics and ass kissing that gets them up there.
There is no shortage of articles about AI replacing entry level jobs.
With reductions in workforce numbers, when will they start replacing managers with AI? What is the point of "leadership" when the workers are AI-bots?
Based on my experiences, I doubt that many of the managers are going to be competent prompt engineers.