The Last Days of the Managerial Class | Hacker News Reader

The Last Days of the Managerial Class

eyeofthesquid.com

34 pointsTinyBig32 comments

Very funny read from the MBA set when the same collapse is happening in software itself. He's saying MBAs are going to have to shift to data analysis and product design roles, as if those aren't being eaten by the very same processes.

But I don't say this to belittle the author, I just mean funny in how people are all grasping around the same elephant (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blind_men_and_an_elephant). I don't claim to have special insight here, just noticing that this is happening across many diverse professions. My personal theory is that we reached the point of diminishing returns of what can be built and effectuated via software or people management and at some point an economy can't bear the dead weight of people pulling down six figure salaries by moving some javascript or PowerPoint slides around, while the base of the economy (industry, farming, energy production, transportation) dies from lack of investment.

See the general subject of "elite overproduction".

It's not clear at all where "AI" is going. Once AIs get reliable enough to be put in charge of things, rather than being merely advisory, we will have a very different society. Everybody here has probably read the late Marshall Brain's "Manna", which outlines how that might play out.

(I'm reading Pikkety's new "Capital and Ideology". Not far enough in to comment yet.)

> at some point an economy can't bear the dead weight of people pulling down six figure salaries by moving some javascript or PowerPoint slides around, while the base of the economy (industry, farming, energy production, transportation) dies from lack of investment.

What if the base of the economy is well-paid power point rangers buying stuff? Because that’s what most of our economy is: consumer spending.

It’s some sort of myth that the American farmer is the core of our economy or something.

> What if the base of the economy is well-paid power point rangers buying stuff? Because that’s what most of our economy is: consumer spending.

Those "well-paid power point rangers" can't be the base of the economy: properly understood, they're an exploitative/parasite class sitting more towards the top of the pyramid.

Are we talking about base in an architectural sense or base as in their spending actually does underpin most of the economy.

One of these is relevant to the conversation.

>>What if the base of the economy is well-paid power point rangers buying stuff? <<

Moody's says that the top 20% of earners are supporting the economy right now... https://www.cnn.com/2025/09/18/business/us-k-shaped-economy-...

"We used to make shit in this country, build shit. Now all we do is put our hand in the next guy's pocket."

> My personal theory is that we reached the point of diminishing returns of what can be built and effectuated via software or people management

I dont think so. There are amazing things that can be done with either, but they require a completely different way of structuring companies, removing the profit motive, or getting rid of a whole lot of "conventional wisdom" and old people.

There are a lot of amazing things that can be done via the management side of things, but have all but been sidelined since the rise of neoliberalism in the 80s and the MBA-ification of management in the 90s and 00s. Doesnt help that these approaches would require that managers are actually competent and learn to work with complexity, data and the like.

> Those who would have become management consultants may need to become applied data scientists; those who would have been people managers may need to become product builders. The new elite pathways are still being forged, but they share a characteristic the old system often lacked: they reward people who can actually do the work, not just coordinate it.

I quite disagree with this and the whole premise. I don't think any knowledge work profession has a moat, and data science (at least in its current form) might be one of the least secure. While I accept the argument that managerial consulting isn't as valuable as it was (and much of that was a mirage to start with), I believe that the ability to maintain situational awareness and to coordinate will become even more crucial.

Good organizations know how to get people who think broad to collaborate with people who think deep. Some organizations culturally value the broad thinkers better, while others value the deep thinkers. I think the reckoning here is really around making this distinctions more egalitarian and finding ways to celebrate the accomplishments of both groups in concert.

So lets suggest we hire a manager to organize the process of "making this distinctions more egalitarian and finding ways to celebrate the accomplishments of both groups in co..." oh wait was that a trojan horse to get a foot back in the door?

> The new economy increasingly rewards people who build things, like write code, design products, analyze data, and conduct research, rather than those who manage the people who build things.

I've been hearing about this 'creator economy' , 'the great flattening'and all the for a while. Meanwhile managment is stronger than ever at Meta both in numbers and in power.

I don't think "this time will be different"

Feels a lot more like power was concentrated again and the bottom line managers and middle managers are being cast out.

This aligns with corporate history in America going back decades.

Like how many of these people in the “management” class are actually managers in the sense that they are given agency over resources and how they are deployed vs supervisors who are just there to make sure the real manager’s(usually a Director or VP) plan is executed or alerting up the chain if it isn’t?

I had more say as a supervisor in a deli at age 20 when I picked what shifts people got without the need for any sign off than I have ever had in the tech industry with the word “Manager” in my title. You’re ostensibly in charge of raises and promotions but in reality you are only advising on those decisions and your vote only matters as much as your real manager cares about your opinion

Software projects benefit from growth in interconnected scale. Ability to maintain cohesion is the limiting factor to such growth. The stable state thus is often lacking.

Fast food restaurant chains scale horizontally and scope of each establishment is limited by geography, thus agency can be maintained at the ground level.

> But artificial intelligence doesn’t care about optionality. It rewards specificity, domain expertise, and the ability to produce measurable results.

I'm sorry what parallel universe are you living in? My dog produces measurable results regularly, twice a day in fact. This article is a joke.

I highly doubt it. Politically savvy bureaucrats will always find things they can insert themselves into, create more bureaucracy and take credit for the work.

It will still exist just most of the managers will become a new class existing only for limiting liability.

Ah, so more CISOs then?

That's the secret, no. Just people to insulate the liability.

That's the CISO joke.

Lollllllll

Are consultancies hiring fewer people? This whole article could do with some more statistics.

Yes: https://www.businessinsider.com/pwc-hiring-fewer-junior-asso...

Hard to see how AI won't shrink margins for information processing industries that don't have regulatory protections: software developers, marketers, lawyers (mostly), accountants, etc.

Middle management is the position worked towards where the reward is little work.

Didn’t many flock to the MBA route after the first dot com bust? Irony.

I often talk with friends about organization design in the context of tech companies and have a saying: an effective organization needs to find ways to be able to compensate high performing ICs more than their boss. One way this is de facto organically accomplished in Silicon Valley to some degree is the effective compensation is a function of time you join than your level in the hierarchy.

Hypothesis: any job that is currently being replaced by AI is a Bullshit Job (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bullshit_Jobs)

I don't see what ease of replacement has to do with Graeber's definition.

Really? By definition, a bullshit job could be replaced by simply eliminating the job, so "replacing" it with an AI seems like an obvious fig leaf for that kind of move.

Does the author's definition include the people replaced by tomato sorting machines, orange harvesters, solar panel washers, fish farm feeding monitors etc?

AI is not an equivalent of that at this point.

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