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Ask HN: What will the impact of AI be on Engineering Management?

10 points by ehsanziya 3y ago

People have discussed at length how they think AI will change software engineering as a profession. But what do folks think the impact of AI will be on the Engineering Manager's role?

billconan 3y ago
My friend, who decided to become a manager early in his career, and I had a discussion on this. He thinks that one key reason for management is due to inefficiency in communication. With AI, individuals can achieve more than they could before. What can only be done by a team of individuals with different skills can be done by a single person in the future. Hence the need for management will decrease. He predicted, in the future, there will be a few mega companies that develop foundational technologies and millions indie or small businesses (without management) built around those technologies. We later saw this blog post that shares the same view. https://mazzzystar.github.io/2023/05/10/LLM-for-individual/ https://mazzzystar.github.io/2023/05/10/LLM-for-individual/
stocktech 3y ago
Hopefully it will eliminate all the boring shit like managing JIRA, giving status updates, and following up with communication tasks. Another large part of my day is also troubleshooting random things, so hopefully AI will benefit my team before I have to get engaged. I don't think AI poses a risk when it comes to setting engineering priorities and building the roadmap. If it could do that, it could probably just build the entire system anyway. EMs are there for the human aspect of engineering, so I also doubt it will impact hiring or EM-engineer ratios. I do expect the bar to being an EM to be higher as the job will be more technical and less project management.
- pdyc 3y ago
  correct.It can only help in analyzing jira and surfacing what could be important, human review would still be required. It can't do anything if people are not responding to communication tasks.
- ehsanziya 3y ago
  > Hopefully it will eliminate all the boring shit like managing JIRA, giving status updates, and following up with communication tasks. Have you tried automating any of these before? Are there tools out there for this? If not, why do you think that is?
glonq 3y ago
The day that I can ask an AI to analyze my team's history of activity in git & jira and then suggest actionable changes that would improve productivity and observability for team members and for the team is the day that I can semi-retire and spend my afternoons at the beach.
- roflyear 3y ago
  How do you even do that as a person?
- pdyc 3y ago
  i am developing a tool for your semi-retirement, its not there yet but if you are interested in trying it and giving me feedback, i can help you semi-retire sooner :-) . checkout the tool here https://gitimprove.com https://gitimprove.com
  - glonq 3y ago
    Thank you. I am thoroughly done with working and would love to collect shells on the beach for the rest of my life ;)
  - gtirloni 3y ago
    Why would anyone fire a manager because your tool is available now? Did I get it right it creates charts for the types of issues your team has, the time spent on them and makes a decision to fire/hire more people? Is that all managers do? You don't even need AI for that. Sorry to be blunt and I don't mean the tool is bad. I'm replying in the context in which it's being discussed (making managers unnecessary).
- ehsanziya 3y ago
  Why do you think this hasn't been built yet?
  - glonq 3y ago
    because something something technology indistinguishable from magic
faeriechangling 3y ago
Managers spending all day sending GPT generated emails to eachother trying to look busy.
- Spooky23 3y ago
  Already happening. Several of the more useless middle managers I deal with are suddenly writing these long emails that are almost certainly edited GPT generated crap. You can pretty easily generate questions or other things to bog people down with. It’s comical.
jf22 3y ago
I'm a terrible writer so I'm hoping chat GPT will allow me to write better emails to support my teams. I could also see use cases to write better reviews. I've experimented with adding my 1:1 notes and coming up with a yearlong summary. The result was really great and neatly summarized a person's accomplishments. One interesting strategy was to ask chat gpt to summarize a communication in a few ways like. I'm skeptical of this person's ideas, what other alternatives to this thought could be? Can you give me other perspectives? The results were interesting and helpful.
electroagenda 3y ago
In my current company, managers are selected to know mostly nothing about the tech field of their group. In such a case, manager's main task is just selecting people for one or other project randomly. Consequently, they don't do anything sophisticated enough for being benefited by chatGPT. Maybe enjoy their free time.
tmaly 3y ago
As an engineer manager, I still try to write all of my emails myself. I recently tried to take something I wrote and see if ChatGPT could improve it. I did not like anything it returned. It was a bit too wordy.
mikewarot 3y ago
Professional engineering is heavy on licensure requirements and personal responsibility. I'd imagine that professional engineers are likely to use AI to generate scenarios, that they will then evaluate fully before signing off on.
faangiq 3y ago
Dropping AI buzzwords will becoming increasingly important. Very important for managers to stay one step ahead in this area.

10 points by ehsanziya 3y ago

People have discussed at length how they think AI will change software engineering as a profession. But what do folks think the impact of AI will be on the Engineering Manager's role?

billconan 3y ago

My friend, who decided to become a manager early in his career, and I had a discussion on this. He thinks that one key reason for management is due to inefficiency in communication. With AI, individuals can achieve more than they could before. What can only be done by a team of individuals with different skills can be done by a single person in the future. Hence the need for management will decrease. He predicted, in the future, there will be a few mega companies that develop foundational technologies and millions indie or small businesses (without management) built around those technologies. We later saw this blog post that shares the same view. https://mazzzystar.github.io/2023/05/10/LLM-for-individual/ https://mazzzystar.github.io/2023/05/10/LLM-for-individual/

stocktech 3y ago

Hopefully it will eliminate all the boring shit like managing JIRA, giving status updates, and following up with communication tasks. Another large part of my day is also troubleshooting random things, so hopefully AI will benefit my team before I have to get engaged. I don't think AI poses a risk when it comes to setting engineering priorities and building the roadmap. If it could do that, it could probably just build the entire system anyway. EMs are there for the human aspect of engineering, so I also doubt it will impact hiring or EM-engineer ratios. I do expect the bar to being an EM to be higher as the job will be more technical and less project management.

pdyc 3y ago
correct.It can only help in analyzing jira and surfacing what could be important, human review would still be required. It can't do anything if people are not responding to communication tasks.
ehsanziya 3y ago
> Hopefully it will eliminate all the boring shit like managing JIRA, giving status updates, and following up with communication tasks. Have you tried automating any of these before? Are there tools out there for this? If not, why do you think that is?

glonq 3y ago

The day that I can ask an AI to analyze my team's history of activity in git & jira and then suggest actionable changes that would improve productivity and observability for team members and for the team is the day that I can semi-retire and spend my afternoons at the beach.

roflyear 3y ago
How do you even do that as a person?
pdyc 3y ago
i am developing a tool for your semi-retirement, its not there yet but if you are interested in trying it and giving me feedback, i can help you semi-retire sooner :-) . checkout the tool here https://gitimprove.com https://gitimprove.com
- glonq 3y ago
  Thank you. I am thoroughly done with working and would love to collect shells on the beach for the rest of my life ;)
- gtirloni 3y ago
  Why would anyone fire a manager because your tool is available now? Did I get it right it creates charts for the types of issues your team has, the time spent on them and makes a decision to fire/hire more people? Is that all managers do? You don't even need AI for that. Sorry to be blunt and I don't mean the tool is bad. I'm replying in the context in which it's being discussed (making managers unnecessary).
ehsanziya 3y ago
Why do you think this hasn't been built yet?
- glonq 3y ago
  because something something technology indistinguishable from magic

faeriechangling 3y ago

Managers spending all day sending GPT generated emails to eachother trying to look busy.

Spooky23 3y ago
Already happening. Several of the more useless middle managers I deal with are suddenly writing these long emails that are almost certainly edited GPT generated crap. You can pretty easily generate questions or other things to bog people down with. It’s comical.

jf22 3y ago

I'm a terrible writer so I'm hoping chat GPT will allow me to write better emails to support my teams. I could also see use cases to write better reviews. I've experimented with adding my 1:1 notes and coming up with a yearlong summary. The result was really great and neatly summarized a person's accomplishments. One interesting strategy was to ask chat gpt to summarize a communication in a few ways like. I'm skeptical of this person's ideas, what other alternatives to this thought could be? Can you give me other perspectives? The results were interesting and helpful.

electroagenda 3y ago

In my current company, managers are selected to know mostly nothing about the tech field of their group. In such a case, manager's main task is just selecting people for one or other project randomly. Consequently, they don't do anything sophisticated enough for being benefited by chatGPT. Maybe enjoy their free time.

tmaly 3y ago

As an engineer manager, I still try to write all of my emails myself. I recently tried to take something I wrote and see if ChatGPT could improve it. I did not like anything it returned. It was a bit too wordy.

mikewarot 3y ago

Professional engineering is heavy on licensure requirements and personal responsibility. I'd imagine that professional engineers are likely to use AI to generate scenarios, that they will then evaluate fully before signing off on.

faangiq 3y ago

Dropping AI buzzwords will becoming increasingly important. Very important for managers to stay one step ahead in this area.