Which kind of begs the question what is a manager?
Anyway - my first thought is coders are new managers (the real knowledge workers are CPUs and GPUs, and if the job of a manager is to build systems to co-ordinate and improve their workers, then that is a good description of a coder)
and second thought is that an awful lot of what is table stakes for a software project today is replacing co-ordination with software
A simple CO/CD pipeline plus regression testing allows disparate teams to work on the same "system" without serious conflicts, and throw in decent feature flaggging and much of the "programme manager role is gone"
it's late, but I am interested in peoples thoughts
Marketing to employees that they are contributing. Marketing to employees that the promotions they got are good, marketing to employees that the promotions they didn't get aren't because they didn't contribute greatly. Marketing to people above that their employees deserve promotion. Marketing to people above that they need more resources/headcount. Marketing to other teams that the priority that rewards them most isn't as important as what rewards your team the most. Marketing to new hires that it's a great place to work. Marketing to employees that could leave that it's a great place to stay. Marketing that the companies vision is great. Marketing that what the employee wants to work on isn't as important as the promises the team made.
Managers are salesmen.
I don't think software is going to replace that any time soon.
I've come to realise there are two basic kinds of manager.
Firstly there's the one who interacts primarily one on one. He is able to understand the big picture, knows something about what's being done (enough to technically understand it) and identifies where communication between engineers needs to happen, or where one member of the team is getting off track.
The other kind of manager doesn't really have that understanding. Their approach is regular meetings, with all team members at every meeting, regardless of the topic. These meetings are often on a regular schedule, like every Wednesday afternoon. Outside of these meetings, you pretty much do whatever you like.
The first kind is typically preferable. Stuff gets done, better and quicker. The second kind gives you more team cover - everyone hears you warn about an upcoming issue so there's less dispute later and you don't get blamed behind your back. These projects though seem to take a lot longer (perhaps because more time is lost in meetings).
So which kind could an AI replace? Well in one sense the second. A shallow understanding, a common forum for engineers to discuss issues, requests for time-lines etc. Sure, seems like a sufficiently good AI could stand in for done managers.
The first kind though is much harder to replace. They have insight (can see issues coming before they happen), experience (we need to get hardware requirements in early because purchasing dept is slow), good people skills (Jane is capable, give her a task, she'll let you know when it's done, Bob is insecure, he needs praise every day) and so on.
So I guess the answer to your question will depend a lot on the managers, and management, you have experienced along the way.
In terms of co-ordinating the work, it's not about make sure that work is getting done, it's about making sure that the right work is getting done at the right time. Usually the role of the manager becomes wrangling all the stakeholders, both inside and outside the team to make sure everyone knows what is going on and is happy with what is being done. But this is a small part of the job as generally it's obvious what needs to be worked on next.
In most cases the majority of the time is going to be spent dealing with people issues. You'll be dealing with problems better handled by therapists, conflict resolvers, employment lawyers, immigration lawyers, and negotiators. But these problems will wash up at your door, usually at 3pm on Friday, and you'll have to triage them simply because there is nobody else to handle them (or the people who are supposed to be dealing with them aren't doing their job).
A good manager is one that knows people, and also knows how to work both within the system and also around the system. And more importantly knows how to get the best of people under difficult and sometimes impossible circumstances.
So in summary, its about people.
People low in the hierarchy will prefer companies that offer "AI managers" because of transparency, bias and perceived fairness
Low level workers on the other hand do not manage anyone else so nobody wants them replaced
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I think a more useful question is “What software would need to exist to make human coordination obsolete?"
Well, I recently founded a startup to tackle exactly this problem!
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