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I think this article fundamentally misunderstands the core function of middle management. You can boil it down to 2 key tasks (on the front lines of a very larg

I think this article fundamentally misunderstands the core function of middle management. You can boil it down to 2 key tasks (on the front lines of a very large organization). a) Interpreting: either top->down by explaining and enforcing corporate policy on hourly workers or bottom->up by ensuring workers enter data to be reported on correctly b) "Encouraging": an employee calls in sick, again. Neither firing them or giving them the day off every time are desirable. The managers role is to "encourage" the performance and attendance (in one way or another) Neither of these are low hanging fruit for automation or even middle hanging fruit for automation. edit: I would also add that the comment "Union formation across the retail landscape will force corporations to reduce management head count" is backwards. From a management perspective, if labor gets rowdy you need more overseers to keep them in line. More union activity = more management headcount

Gigachad 4y ago
In some ways tech can do better. It can constantly monitor many more details than a human can. It doesn’t give you a disapproving look when you take too many sick days but it does calculate a score showing over the month you got less done than your coworkers.
- phantomathkg 4y ago
  And if that worker is genuinely sick for whatever reason, can AI beat human in showing empathy?
- quirkot 4y ago
  It reads like you are describing reporting. How many frowny faces were sent out at Store 123 last month for attendance? But the reason you need lower/middle mgmt is that the real question is "so what do we do to stop having these frowny faces?"
  - Gigachad 4y ago
    What the system does is the rostering system preferences the workers with the highest scores when assigning shifts. And I suppose makes this number viewable to the workers so they can see why they have to optimise.
    - shock-value 4y ago
      The idea that an automated shift scheduling system (even if efficacious) could replace middle managers entirely is not credible.
    - quirkot 4y ago
      Ok, let's roll with that. If I'm Alice, why do I care about Bob's score? Why do I care about your system at all? I'm trying to pay rent and not work on my kid's birthday. WHO is going to explain why the frowny faces matter? That person is your middle manager
    - vages 4y ago
      You do not need AI to treat the workers that have historically performed well (as measured on some quantitative scale) better than others. Most businesses just don’t do it, as finding an objective scale is hard and people have good reasons for underperforming for periods of time (sick leave, parental leave). The supply of even untrained workers is finite, so you have to treat them as people.
    - notahacker 4y ago
      Sure, and workers have great fun exploiting the hell out of whatever shitty metrics they're given but certain stuff just doesn't get done, and workers who like dealing with humans (probably the best sort of workers to have in a retail organization...) leave. We could do this with developers too. Give the biggest raise to the developers with the most lines of code committed, and maybe design a shiny dashboard with it as a number to replace the project manager. What could possibly go wrong?
- spaceman_2020 4y ago
  Oh boy, I would love to work for a company where my boss monitors me constantly then sends me a daily score! /s There is a human element to managing people that AI simply cannot do. A boss (good or bad) can change his behavior based on anything from office rumor to the way you look on a certain day. He can decide to go easy on you for a while because he heard through someone else that your dog died last week. He can simply look at you and decide that you look depressed and pull you aside and ask you what's wrong. Human interaction and relationships are so complex and nuanced that no AI is going to replace it for a long, long time - until we have proper AGI at least. The only thing I see AI doing is putting some proofreaders and crappy graphic designers out of business.
  - kvdveer 4y ago
    I think the main problem AI faces is trust. A manager needs some level of trust from both the higher ups and the workers. Not necessarily a "I trust my life with you", but more of a trust in basic human decency. I can imagine higher ups trusting some piece of software, but I have a very hard time imagining workers trusting an AI. This is not something that can be fixed by improving the AI, as the true problem lies outside the domain of AI. Once AI has proven itself to be trustworthy enough, it maybe can perform a mgmt role, but I have no clue how it could ever prove itself without being trusted in the first place.
- sakarisson 4y ago
  An objective report proving low performance doesn't do much to encourage the employee to improve.
cratermoon 4y ago
Counterpoint: Who was designated "essential worker" during the pandemic?
- waynesonfire 4y ago
  sectors and industries were labelled "essential worker", e.g. grocery stores. Do you think management within those sectors stopped "interpreting" and "encouraging"?
- DocTomoe 4y ago
  This may be just me, but where I live, virtually everyone was eventually considered "essential".
JohnJamesRambo 4y ago
I feel like a chatbot could do B just about as well and it scales.
- JumpCrisscross 4y ago
  > I feel like a chatbot could do B just about as well and it scales Would I have a competitor with such convictions.
- exitb 4y ago
  The "encouraging" part also comes from the fact that the employee feels heard and understood, which a chatbot cannot provide.
Kiro 4y ago
In what dystopian country do you live where you don't automatically get the day off when calling in sick?
- camillomiller 4y ago
  The country that thinks the world’s workplace culture is everywhere as f-up as theirs: the United States of America
- cgrealy 4y ago
  While I agree that encouraging a sick employee to work is all kinds of messed up, most countries impose a limit on sick days. At that point, you need to talk to the employee and figure out a solution.
  - makeitdouble 4y ago
    The limit on sick days only matters for payroll decisions (what bucket will the day off fit in, paid leave or unpaid leave?). IME that's handled directly by the employee most of the time when they request the day off in the system. The manager gets involved at performance evaluation time, or if it has severe otherwise impacts (you're then asking the person to potentially leave), but I don't see the "figure out a solution" part of it. Asking someone to be less sick feels complicated.
    - cgrealy 4y ago
      It’s not just about “asking someone to be less sick”, you need to ascertain if there are other factors: are they over worked? is there a serious condition that you might need to support? Or conversely, is the sick leave legitimate? Some employees do abuse sick leave. Either way, a good manager can work with the employee to get a good outcome for both parties.
      - makeitdouble 4y ago
        I completely agree with you on the overworked part, though it's a delicate situation if you're their direct manager and have to rely on them to report how much work they are doing. It happens (a lot more than we're willing to accept I think), and it becomes more a discussion on management than on the employee per se. On the other parts, it might be a cultural difference: I'd expect all of those to be handled by HR. For instance, specific work time adjustments, additional rest time due to a physical or psychological condition, family issues etc. are delicate and potentially private matter that go beyond the manager's supervision. The manager needs to be notified of the resulting discussions, but I wouldn't expect them to get all the details directly from the employee for instance. That's also where the abuse of sick leave becomes a delicate issue to address at the manager level: companies have policies on how you justify the sick leave (doctor notes, medical bills etc.) or they let it open to the employee's judgement call. The former is clear cut, and abusing it means faking papers, so it's straight in HR territory. The later is more tricky, but I'd hate to be in a position where I have to hear the employee's story and decide if it's fake or not, potentially putting a the target on my back if the employee gets punished for actual issues I underestimated. It feels like a real shitty position to be in, I'd probably not bother confronting the employee except if they have literally dozens of sick leave days available.
pydry 4y ago
>Neither of these are low hanging fruit for automation The Uber app already does both of these things. Encouragement is done via gamification and adjusting pricing and the app itself collects all the data it needs and explains everything the driver needs to know.
- notahacker 4y ago
  Ah yes, the Uber app. Because all work is as simple and collaborative as going to a particular point to pick up a passenger, everybody dreams of working for a worker-friendly organization like Uber.
  - vasco 4y ago
    What they are saying is that for some jobs, it's already like this, so it's not completely out there to consider it expanding as tech gets better. Uber being good or bad is besides the point.
  - pydry 4y ago
    Certainly it cant be applied as effectively to every domain but it's already spreading. In some domains I'll bet it will mean that middle managers will simply have the tools to be able to effectively manage 60 instead of 10 workers. In others perhaps it wont change much. In others like taxis the middle manager will be made entirely redundant. I dont think it's necessarily a good thing either but that doesnt mean it's not going to happen.
fho 4y ago
> bottom->up by ensuring workers enter data to be reported on correctly Isn't this were management fails? Gathering the data that is required to decide well? Eg my SOs company recently introduced the third generation of company wide management software, but as before nobody really used it and all important information is still collected in spreadsheets. "AI management" could start out like Google Assistant, just have a button on your desk to set up reminders because it actually is easier than opening some application and typing in the reminder. The thing is that it has to be extremly simple to do. Even thou I am not a fan of constantly listening devices, a company wide "OK Google/Hey Siri" would be extremly valuable. Imaging two coworkers standing in the company floor: - "so about feature X?" - "arg ... yep ... I'll get it done by next week" - "Computer!?" - <beep boop> - "Create a reminder for [Coworker] to finish feature X by next week" - <ok human, I have created a reminder for Coworker> This is literally not sci-fi straight out of Star Trek anymore, but something that (at least) I use daily to remind me of little things like getting the laundry from the basement :-)
- TheLoafOfBread 4y ago
  > Imaging two coworkers standing in the company floor: - "so about feature X?" - "arg ... yep ... I'll get it done by next week" - "Computer!?" - <beep boop> - "Create a reminder for [Coworker] to finish feature X by next week" - <ok human, I have created a reminder for Coworker> More like: " - "Computer!?" - <beep boop> - "Create a reminder for [Coworker] to finish feature X by next week" - <Creating a Redmine server for [Coworker] > - "No! Stop!" <Are you under threat? Should I call police?> This is roughly my experience with current "smart assistants"
  - fho 4y ago
    Hmm no ... "Works for me" ... Google Assistant has been incredibly correct in what it recognizes. Just to prove my point I will dictate this paragraph an expect Google assistant will transcribe it perfectly. Nja... Not perfect ... but really close.
madsbuch 4y ago
I think this is spot on. However, I think the author is half right: Middle management is probably going to be replaces, but I don't think it is by AI, but by competitive incentive structures -- its algorithmic governance anyways.
negamax 4y ago
Most of the low-weak managers rely on data. That's how their affirm their decisions to wider group. AI can totally be a better data predictor and user than humans. If all a manager do (middle or higher) is collect and interpret data, they should be replaced by a program
- naijaboiler 4y ago
  This is a very naive take on what middle management is
  - negamax 4y ago
    I am talking about bad managers here who throw around data a lot. This is not a bad take. AI at this stage is less of a doer, more of a predictor based on data. It should replace management glut that many companies face. It will also make things more consistent instead of leaving them to whims of someone
rocqua 4y ago
In some sense, that is lower management. Middle management sits between the people who connect with the work floor, and the people who actually make decisions. These positions do seem ripe for AI replacement.
naijaboiler 4y ago
Correct. Middle management is pretty much all human management. AIs are miles miles away from being able to do that. AI make good middle management even more critical, by removing the non-human aspects of the job
kcexn 4y ago
'Middle Management' is also not a well defined term. For some, managers like you have described could be thought of as front line managers. Or supervisors. And middle management are the layers, usually many, that separate the front line managers from the senior executives. The role of middle management is often to oversee budgets, and be accountable for financial performance in certain geographic regions or business areas. Middle managers don't employ workers. They employ other managers. Lots of these kinds of jobs will probably be made so simple that entire layers of management will just be removed. Some examples from chain retail might be: The franchisee of say, a McDonald's, is in some sense a middle manager. They hire store managers to run the stores in the area that they're responsible for. And they're accountable for the financial performance of all the McDonald's that they own. The 'Regional Manager' of some large company. They won't be involved in the day to day activity of the business, but they're often an important cog in the wheel because they have local visibility on the financial performance of the business in the region, and are best positioned to allocate the budget in ways that maximize financial performance. Again, they don't hire workers, they hire other managers.

Gigachad 4y ago

In some ways tech can do better. It can constantly monitor many more details than a human can. It doesn’t give you a disapproving look when you take too many sick days but it does calculate a score showing over the month you got less done than your coworkers.

phantomathkg 4y ago
And if that worker is genuinely sick for whatever reason, can AI beat human in showing empathy?
quirkot 4y ago
It reads like you are describing reporting. How many frowny faces were sent out at Store 123 last month for attendance? But the reason you need lower/middle mgmt is that the real question is "so what do we do to stop having these frowny faces?"
- Gigachad 4y ago
  What the system does is the rostering system preferences the workers with the highest scores when assigning shifts. And I suppose makes this number viewable to the workers so they can see why they have to optimise.
  - shock-value 4y ago
    The idea that an automated shift scheduling system (even if efficacious) could replace middle managers entirely is not credible.
  - quirkot 4y ago
    Ok, let's roll with that. If I'm Alice, why do I care about Bob's score? Why do I care about your system at all? I'm trying to pay rent and not work on my kid's birthday. WHO is going to explain why the frowny faces matter? That person is your middle manager
  - vages 4y ago
    You do not need AI to treat the workers that have historically performed well (as measured on some quantitative scale) better than others. Most businesses just don’t do it, as finding an objective scale is hard and people have good reasons for underperforming for periods of time (sick leave, parental leave). The supply of even untrained workers is finite, so you have to treat them as people.
  - notahacker 4y ago
    Sure, and workers have great fun exploiting the hell out of whatever shitty metrics they're given but certain stuff just doesn't get done, and workers who like dealing with humans (probably the best sort of workers to have in a retail organization...) leave. We could do this with developers too. Give the biggest raise to the developers with the most lines of code committed, and maybe design a shiny dashboard with it as a number to replace the project manager. What could possibly go wrong?
spaceman_2020 4y ago
Oh boy, I would love to work for a company where my boss monitors me constantly then sends me a daily score! /s There is a human element to managing people that AI simply cannot do. A boss (good or bad) can change his behavior based on anything from office rumor to the way you look on a certain day. He can decide to go easy on you for a while because he heard through someone else that your dog died last week. He can simply look at you and decide that you look depressed and pull you aside and ask you what's wrong. Human interaction and relationships are so complex and nuanced that no AI is going to replace it for a long, long time - until we have proper AGI at least. The only thing I see AI doing is putting some proofreaders and crappy graphic designers out of business.
- kvdveer 4y ago
  I think the main problem AI faces is trust. A manager needs some level of trust from both the higher ups and the workers. Not necessarily a "I trust my life with you", but more of a trust in basic human decency. I can imagine higher ups trusting some piece of software, but I have a very hard time imagining workers trusting an AI. This is not something that can be fixed by improving the AI, as the true problem lies outside the domain of AI. Once AI has proven itself to be trustworthy enough, it maybe can perform a mgmt role, but I have no clue how it could ever prove itself without being trusted in the first place.
sakarisson 4y ago
An objective report proving low performance doesn't do much to encourage the employee to improve.

cratermoon 4y ago

Counterpoint: Who was designated "essential worker" during the pandemic?

waynesonfire 4y ago
sectors and industries were labelled "essential worker", e.g. grocery stores. Do you think management within those sectors stopped "interpreting" and "encouraging"?
DocTomoe 4y ago
This may be just me, but where I live, virtually everyone was eventually considered "essential".

JohnJamesRambo 4y ago

I feel like a chatbot could do B just about as well and it scales.

JumpCrisscross 4y ago
> I feel like a chatbot could do B just about as well and it scales Would I have a competitor with such convictions.
exitb 4y ago
The "encouraging" part also comes from the fact that the employee feels heard and understood, which a chatbot cannot provide.

Kiro 4y ago

In what dystopian country do you live where you don't automatically get the day off when calling in sick?

camillomiller 4y ago
The country that thinks the world’s workplace culture is everywhere as f-up as theirs: the United States of America
cgrealy 4y ago
While I agree that encouraging a sick employee to work is all kinds of messed up, most countries impose a limit on sick days. At that point, you need to talk to the employee and figure out a solution.
- makeitdouble 4y ago
  The limit on sick days only matters for payroll decisions (what bucket will the day off fit in, paid leave or unpaid leave?). IME that's handled directly by the employee most of the time when they request the day off in the system. The manager gets involved at performance evaluation time, or if it has severe otherwise impacts (you're then asking the person to potentially leave), but I don't see the "figure out a solution" part of it. Asking someone to be less sick feels complicated.
  - cgrealy 4y ago
    It’s not just about “asking someone to be less sick”, you need to ascertain if there are other factors: are they over worked? is there a serious condition that you might need to support? Or conversely, is the sick leave legitimate? Some employees do abuse sick leave. Either way, a good manager can work with the employee to get a good outcome for both parties.
    - makeitdouble 4y ago
      I completely agree with you on the overworked part, though it's a delicate situation if you're their direct manager and have to rely on them to report how much work they are doing. It happens (a lot more than we're willing to accept I think), and it becomes more a discussion on management than on the employee per se. On the other parts, it might be a cultural difference: I'd expect all of those to be handled by HR. For instance, specific work time adjustments, additional rest time due to a physical or psychological condition, family issues etc. are delicate and potentially private matter that go beyond the manager's supervision. The manager needs to be notified of the resulting discussions, but I wouldn't expect them to get all the details directly from the employee for instance. That's also where the abuse of sick leave becomes a delicate issue to address at the manager level: companies have policies on how you justify the sick leave (doctor notes, medical bills etc.) or they let it open to the employee's judgement call. The former is clear cut, and abusing it means faking papers, so it's straight in HR territory. The later is more tricky, but I'd hate to be in a position where I have to hear the employee's story and decide if it's fake or not, potentially putting a the target on my back if the employee gets punished for actual issues I underestimated. It feels like a real shitty position to be in, I'd probably not bother confronting the employee except if they have literally dozens of sick leave days available.

pydry 4y ago

>Neither of these are low hanging fruit for automation The Uber app already does both of these things. Encouragement is done via gamification and adjusting pricing and the app itself collects all the data it needs and explains everything the driver needs to know.

notahacker 4y ago
Ah yes, the Uber app. Because all work is as simple and collaborative as going to a particular point to pick up a passenger, everybody dreams of working for a worker-friendly organization like Uber.
- vasco 4y ago
  What they are saying is that for some jobs, it's already like this, so it's not completely out there to consider it expanding as tech gets better. Uber being good or bad is besides the point.
- pydry 4y ago
  Certainly it cant be applied as effectively to every domain but it's already spreading. In some domains I'll bet it will mean that middle managers will simply have the tools to be able to effectively manage 60 instead of 10 workers. In others perhaps it wont change much. In others like taxis the middle manager will be made entirely redundant. I dont think it's necessarily a good thing either but that doesnt mean it's not going to happen.

fho 4y ago

> bottom->up by ensuring workers enter data to be reported on correctly Isn't this were management fails? Gathering the data that is required to decide well? Eg my SOs company recently introduced the third generation of company wide management software, but as before nobody really used it and all important information is still collected in spreadsheets. "AI management" could start out like Google Assistant, just have a button on your desk to set up reminders because it actually is easier than opening some application and typing in the reminder. The thing is that it has to be extremly simple to do. Even thou I am not a fan of constantly listening devices, a company wide "OK Google/Hey Siri" would be extremly valuable. Imaging two coworkers standing in the company floor: - "so about feature X?" - "arg ... yep ... I'll get it done by next week" - "Computer!?" - <beep boop> - "Create a reminder for [Coworker] to finish feature X by next week" - <ok human, I have created a reminder for Coworker> This is literally not sci-fi straight out of Star Trek anymore, but something that (at least) I use daily to remind me of little things like getting the laundry from the basement :-)

TheLoafOfBread 4y ago
> Imaging two coworkers standing in the company floor: - "so about feature X?" - "arg ... yep ... I'll get it done by next week" - "Computer!?" - <beep boop> - "Create a reminder for [Coworker] to finish feature X by next week" - <ok human, I have created a reminder for Coworker> More like: " - "Computer!?" - <beep boop> - "Create a reminder for [Coworker] to finish feature X by next week" - <Creating a Redmine server for [Coworker] > - "No! Stop!" <Are you under threat? Should I call police?> This is roughly my experience with current "smart assistants"
- fho 4y ago
  Hmm no ... "Works for me" ... Google Assistant has been incredibly correct in what it recognizes. Just to prove my point I will dictate this paragraph an expect Google assistant will transcribe it perfectly. Nja... Not perfect ... but really close.

madsbuch 4y ago

I think this is spot on. However, I think the author is half right: Middle management is probably going to be replaces, but I don't think it is by AI, but by competitive incentive structures -- its algorithmic governance anyways.

negamax 4y ago

Most of the low-weak managers rely on data. That's how their affirm their decisions to wider group. AI can totally be a better data predictor and user than humans. If all a manager do (middle or higher) is collect and interpret data, they should be replaced by a program

naijaboiler 4y ago
This is a very naive take on what middle management is
- negamax 4y ago
  I am talking about bad managers here who throw around data a lot. This is not a bad take. AI at this stage is less of a doer, more of a predictor based on data. It should replace management glut that many companies face. It will also make things more consistent instead of leaving them to whims of someone

rocqua 4y ago

In some sense, that is lower management. Middle management sits between the people who connect with the work floor, and the people who actually make decisions. These positions do seem ripe for AI replacement.

naijaboiler 4y ago

Correct. Middle management is pretty much all human management. AIs are miles miles away from being able to do that. AI make good middle management even more critical, by removing the non-human aspects of the job

kcexn 4y ago

'Middle Management' is also not a well defined term. For some, managers like you have described could be thought of as front line managers. Or supervisors. And middle management are the layers, usually many, that separate the front line managers from the senior executives. The role of middle management is often to oversee budgets, and be accountable for financial performance in certain geographic regions or business areas. Middle managers don't employ workers. They employ other managers. Lots of these kinds of jobs will probably be made so simple that entire layers of management will just be removed. Some examples from chain retail might be: The franchisee of say, a McDonald's, is in some sense a middle manager. They hire store managers to run the stores in the area that they're responsible for. And they're accountable for the financial performance of all the McDonald's that they own. The 'Regional Manager' of some large company. They won't be involved in the day to day activity of the business, but they're often an important cog in the wheel because they have local visibility on the financial performance of the business in the region, and are best positioned to allocate the budget in ways that maximize financial performance. Again, they don't hire workers, they hire other managers.