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This summer I went camping and at the campground next to me was a middle manager at Amazon. I’ve been out of the workforce for about a year, so I asked him how

This summer I went camping and at the campground next to me was a middle manager at Amazon. I’ve been out of the workforce for about a year, so I asked him how much of an impact AI was having in his role. He told me that he had worked to develop a tool that would replace effectively all of the middle management function that he was responsible for: gathering information from folks below him, distilling it down and reporting that to people above him. His hope was that he would be retained to maintain the system that he built, knowing that every other manager at his level was going to be terminated. It felt like watching someone who is about to be executed be responsible for building the gallows. He should’ve been so aware that his job was going to be the first one cut, and he was responsible for building a tool to cut his own job. But he was optimistic that the cuts wouldn’t come for him Makes me wonder how he’s doing today

shermantanktop 8mo ago
Undoubtedly his tool turned out to suck, and his managers realized that it made him faster but didn't eliminate the need for his role. "Every other manager" is a pipe dream and if it's true it means that group is pathetically inefficient and underutilizing the talents of even an average manager. That's what I'd say in 2026. 2-3 years from now, not sure. But right now, AI can't run a vending machine without selling too many tungsten cubes.
theusus 8mo ago
[flagged]
- vile_wretch 8mo ago
  Yes that is how anecdotes work
  - dingnuts 8mo ago
    [dead]
mayhemducks 8mo ago
If I set aside for a moment, and for the sake of argument, the fact that we all have to earn a living, why would anyone want a job where you distill a bunch of input from those "below you" and relay it to those "above you"? That sounds like a job I would never want to get out of bed to do. If I were one of the people fired, I would be so friggen happy I don't have to do this BS job anymore.
- samus 8mo ago
  > If I set aside for a moment, and for the sake of argument, the fact that we all have to earn a living Congrats for making an argument completely disassociated from reality.
- Imustaskforhelp 8mo ago
  I guess people need money to buy food to survive? > I would be so friggen happy I don't have to do this BS job anymore. Alright the freezer's empty with no food and you have no money. Probably a family to manage with kids and demands or say have hobbies which costs money. I am an extremely frugal person myself but even I will admit that there is just no way that one can purely just exist without a FIRE & even within FIRE some aspects of FIRE want you to have a job but not only just any job but the job you like. Judging from GP's comment. I feel like the person they are talking about might not have saved enough money so they were a bit worried about it but even if they did, losing a job still impacts mentally and they (didn't?) want to go through such transition. I guess the point is to really save money & be frugal at times. It's usually something which benefits me but I am single right now but I can imagine that with a family & a wife & different dynamics, frugality can be hard to live by when you have to convince your wife to say down-size or your children to & it can impact one's freedom probably. Personally wishing to have a lot of savings to go through when single before getting married. Unironically this & some sense of getting respect within society & getting the prospectus of some good dating connection in such sense is the reason why (many) people look for any jobs. I will admit that if someone offers me such a job, the offer to take will be hard to resist (even though I would consider I have a stronger than average desire for a job that I truly like/enjoy fwiw)
nxm 8mo ago
Actual effective managers do much more than "gathering information from folks below him, distilling it down and reporting that to people above him."
- m0llusk 8mo ago
  might be able to get a fat contract fee from letting Amazon know about that
- conscion 8mo ago
  > Actual effective managers do much more And how many managers are effective vs. only information funnels?
  - BobbyJo 8mo ago
    The bad ones tend not to be information funnels.
  - avalys 8mo ago
    Firing a bunch of ineffective managers because they can easily be replaced by AI seems like a net improvement to me.
    - varjag 8mo ago
      Where are the failed programmers supposed to go then?
      - pc86 8mo ago
        Product Management.
  - signal11 8mo ago
    Even “only” information funnels have value if they seek out valuable info, filter, curate. In reality some funnels in this context mutate the message they’re supposed to pass on :-)
paxys 8mo ago
Did you copy paste this from LinkedIn?
- datsci_est_2015 8mo ago
  lol thank you I was trying to see if anyone else also read this with a raised eyebrow. “Yes so these ICs and other non-management staff are going to be reporting to this LLM and then magic and executives are informed of everything they need to know.”
varispeed 8mo ago
> gathering information from folks below him I thought that information is only available through organic conversations by the watercooler and cross polination of teams. Does it mean you no longer will have to come to office as long as you talk to AI over Slack? Or are they going to slap laptop on a Roomba and still mandate office attendance?
- spiritplumber 8mo ago
  Let's split the difference and put a brain on a Roomba like in Fallout.
mrtksn 8mo ago
TBH the last 20-30 years was exactly like that but computers were eliminating other peoples jobs for really good profits for the investors and really good salaries for the workers doing the elimination. Before that people were eliminating blue colar workers with highly productive machines and industrial robots. I don't see how eliminating your co-workers is any different. Software ate the world and now AI will eat the "software professionals". When this is over, just like the rust belts there will be code belts where once highly valued software developers will be living in decaying neighborhoods and the politicians will be promising to create software jobs by banning AI.
- carlcortright 8mo ago
  this is a very pessimistic take could be, but the universe is odd in so many different ways it's hard to be sure
  - deleted 8mo ago
    [deleted]
  - izzydata 8mo ago
    It feels more like a really optimistic take on AI. I won't say it is impossible, but I haven't seen anything that suggests AI is going to do what OpenAI and Nvidia claims it will.
- chrysoprace 8mo ago
  There might be a time when software developers become obsolete, and I don't pretend to know the future, but if today's models are anything to go by then it won't happen any time soon. At the end of the day, there'll still be a need for highly skilled technical experts, whatever that job looks like.
  - geodel 8mo ago
    > At the end of the day, there'll still be a need for highly skilled technical experts, whatever that job looks like. Well, this is kind of obvious right. Highly skilled people of next generation will do fine. The point is millions of highly skilled successful people of today could soon be below average category, jobless and can be called clueless, stuck in old ways who didn't simply see what is happening in the world. And I am not blaming anyone. Despite seeing changes coming even I am not able to do much either. Just hilariously trying to do "cloud technology" courses which folks did decades back, made money and by now even forgot about it.
robotswantdata 8mo ago
No offence, but this is 5% of what a middle manager does. We automated this task years back without LLMs too.
baxtr 8mo ago
Oh dear. I wish middle management was simply "gathering information" from the decks below and reporting it to the bridge.
- aorloff 8mo ago
  Tell you what, why don't we get rid of management altogether and just have a flat org ?
  - Aurornis 8mo ago
    Been there, done that. It brings its own set of chaos and office politics. The shadow org structures can be worse than the official ones.
  - oblio 8mo ago
    Because social animals have hierarchical social structures.
    - hackable_sand 8mo ago
      We also have flat social structures, what is your point?
      - oblio 8mo ago
        Really? How often and for how many people? Which ones dominate and are more frequent, flat or hierarchical? Which ones do we use for our most complex endeavors?
  - Bhilai 8mo ago
    > A few years into the company’s life, founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin actually wondered whether Google needed any managers at all. In 2002 they experimented with a completely flat organization, eliminating engineering managers in an effort to break down barriers to rapid idea development and to replicate the collegial environment they’d enjoyed in graduate school. That experiment lasted only a few months: They relented when too many people went directly to Page with questions about expense reports, interpersonal conflicts, and other nitty-gritty issues. And as the company grew, the founders soon realized that managers contributed in many other, important ways—for instance, by communicating strategy, helping employees prioritize projects, facilitating collaboration, supporting career development, and ensuring that processes and systems aligned with company goals. https://hbr.org/2013/12/how-google-sold-its-engineers-on-management https://hbr.org/2013/12/how-google-sold-its-engineers-on-man...
SpaceNoodled 8mo ago
He probably still lives there
tshaddox 8mo ago
> It felt like watching someone who is about to be executed be responsible for building the gallows Perilaus of Athens designed the Brazen Bull, a hollow bronze statue used to roast victims alive. When he presented it to the tyrant Phalaris, Phalaris was so disgusted by the cruelty of the device that he ordered Perilaus to be the first person tested inside it.
toddmorey 8mo ago
“He should’ve been so aware that his job was going to be the first one cut, and he was responsible for building a tool to cut his own job” That tool was going to get built whether he did it or someone else did. Maybe only thing to do is buy time building it while actively looking elsewhere.
- Imustaskforhelp 8mo ago
  > “He should’ve been so aware that his job was going to be the first one cut, and he was responsible for building a tool to cut his own job” > That tool was going to get built whether he did it or someone else did. Maybe only thing to do is buy time building it while actively looking elsewhere. This has such a dark vibe to it that I am unable to explain. It really feels like an I was only following orders command just hoping that you don't get to the wrong side of this stick as they was hoping for At the same time protest isn't an option. It does feel like some form of active suffering for someone to write the replacement of themselves while the economy goes to complete dumpster fire and nobody's hiring (much). All while Completely pure form of AI slop goes up and up so even any interesting idea or anything will have to fight really hard for attention in public spaces like say show HN or other websites. So you are forced to pay "Internet rent" to the overlords like Google & Meta who will use the same money to then train better models (especially Google?) to continue this cycle. All while people lose their privacy and nobody even talks about it. With all the thousands of problems happening. Can we please just stop this circle just once and evaluate where things are going if they are net positive for humanity itself & if there is anything to stop this cycle. Fundamentally most countries are democracies. Yes there are lobbying efforts but one forgets that these large corpos pay to somehow pursuade you or the politician that you elect. Can someone smart in politics talk about such issues & raise them & a fight towards lobbying/corruption (all throughout the world?) be established. I guess this becomes way too broad of a goal but somehow I always end up feeling corruption and politics & money's lobbying connection can be a root cause of many issues (much throughout the world)
- achenatx 8mo ago
  the answer is build it again and start selling it to other companies.
deleted 8mo ago
[deleted]
Aurornis 8mo ago
> He told me that he had worked to develop a tool that would replace effectively all of the middle management function that he was responsible for: gathering information from folks below him, distilling it down and reporting that to people above him. Any manager whose job was this simple was on borrowed time anyway. I think the person was feeding you a story around the campfire to impress you. Real management work doesn't operate like this.
- retinaros 8mo ago
  lol. it does. its a good description of about 90% of the mgrs
  - simianparrot 8mo ago
    Seems like Amazon is doing the right thing cutting down its corporate workforce then.
- complianceowl 8mo ago
  [dead]
- jdmg94 8mo ago
  you would be amazed at the amount of middle managers who keep failing upwards in organizations like Amazon
  - ganoushoreilly 8mo ago
    Happens in the Govt too. I think it's pretty common that if you can "sell a story" you're in a better spot than simply doing well at the job.
    - NicoJuicy 8mo ago
      That's literally the current president
babyoil 8mo ago
You should watch this movie: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1527793/ https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1527793/
- mjevans 8mo ago
  Or Office Space (warning, Rated R for some language and crude distractions / conversations.) https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0151804 https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0151804 Still, it documents the typical work culture of the US in the late 1990s / early 2000s. It's sad and amazing how much of that remains the same.
socalgal2 8mo ago
I'm super sympathetic that losing your job sucks. I lost mine once. At the same time, what's the alternative? Progress happens. We no longer have liveries for holding horses nor horse shoe makers (not at the level we used to). We no longer have telephone operators. Making up jobs to keep people employed isn't a viable solution to me. Supporting them in some way (re-training, UBI, service work, ...) seems like the only way forward. I guess maybe I can imagine making it harder to fire people so you have to find something to do with them. But that also has negative consequences. Small companies won't/can't hire because they can't make the guarantees big companies can.
- paul7986 8mo ago
  Just lost my UX Researcher, Designer, UI Developer and CX Support job (8 years) two weeks of ago. They said doing a great job but have to lay you off. Within a week i put my house up for sale and received an offer. Time to downsize, "try," to stay in tech yet study to be a nurse. My field and career of 20 years seems like a vanishing one.
  - Imustaskforhelp 8mo ago
    Sorry to hear that. But coming to this point, its absolutely unfathomable seeing the difference between these two types of things On One hand we have cursor whose burning like 5-6 Million $ of money in trying to build a browser only for it to be riddled with bugs and literally just the money went into fire (read emsh's post and how he built better alternative) I mean I guess I learnt something from them burning 5 million $ but I see a lot of Companies burn so much money. My point is that all of these companies burn massive amounts of money in LLM's sometimes just for the sake of it and then some of these same companies go the other way and then fire people working. I mean is there no way for a company to be reasonable. You worked there 8 years, You knew how things worked. Getting anyone new up and running would be hard especially given you had customer relations. Tf they mean doing a great job but they have to lay you off? I mean, is the company doing really bad (I am considering something like tailwind happening here?) or what exactly. But tailwind's situation was (unique?) because their business was eaten by AI itself. Not sure about your (former) company though but I hope that you can tell more specifics if possible.
learingsci 8mo ago
Where was he from? Recent hires are sometimes the first to go, depending on certain other factors.
aprdm 8mo ago
If that's his value add as a manager then that's a problem in itself
diyseguy 8mo ago
I have always felt that if I could do a job really well, do work that required no maintenance, was basically 'self-healing' so to speak, with documentation so clear and easy to understand that someone could pick up where I left off without asking me a single question. For me that was always my aesthetic and goal in any work I did. Yet, here I am, an experienced software engineer, unemployed for over a year now. It still seems to me the right ideal, so the 'karmic' outcome feels unjust really.
hintymad 8mo ago
> He told me that he had worked to develop a tool that would replace effectively all of the middle management function that he was responsible for: gathering information from folks below him, distilling it down and reporting that to people above him. That sounds an organizational issue. I always thought that a manager should push product vision at their own level, get and organize resources, and assess the talent as fairly as possible. That is, a combination of the job of a general and a PM. Controlling the information may be necessary for survival, but it should not be the job description.
- Mars008 8mo ago
  > I always thought that a manager should push product vision at their own level, get and organize resources, and assess the talent as fairly as possible. LOL, reality is very different. Manager first of all is working to keep his position, second to get promoted. Most of them. For keeping he need to become irreplaceable. For that they create kill zone around eliminating competitors. Working against those with brain, not promoting, giving negative reviews, creating 'cases', taking credits for others job. Making those who can leave. I've seen a lot of this shit. This creates a local depressive shithole. It can go for decades in monopolies and in low competition markets.
motbus3 8mo ago
If he was a middle manager it wasn't him doing the work anyway
jmspring 8mo ago
There is a lot of middle management. I would include PMs in this. Salesforce does planning from Benioff down. Goals -> each report goals, etc. Planning based off goals - much horse trading. Planning from the lead/pm level - weekly - more horse trading. Reality was urgent stuff got taken care of. Literally over a two year period, outside fancy wording, the technical component of the initial goals maybe completed 30%. There are a lot of inefficiencies I can see what this manager at AWS was trying to optimize for.
yieldcrv 8mo ago
I'm in a well funded somewhat greenfield org - not a startup - we use mcp servers of that specific ticket tracking system within the coding tools to handle ticket creation, assignment, tracking, status, completion, updated by what code is being hit. mostly inheriting existing workflows like git comments, pull requests, tickets referenced in those already, just AI writes those commit messages and PR comments too. reports about all of that are made by AI as well to the stakeholder that needs to see that distilled in their language. We won't be hiring middle management, no product managers, no engineering managers, VPs The only aspect we don't have solved is a buffer between sales/execs and engineers, but all other functions are automated away alongside other AI assisted coding that there actually is bandwidth for the schizophrenic ideas. Things that used to be tech debt and not prioritized by engineers without management suddenly are all solved, AI makes the cleanest REST API's I've ever seen, obscure verbs properly implemented immediately. Test cases all done. It's working really well and the friction with non technical PMs and hierarchies is gone its a 1 liner to add relevant mcp servers to Claude Code, and every ticket tracker already has an mcp server out for triaging between UX designers, we also just don't. we use an mcp server for UX, I can point playwright - which is usually used for testing your own site - at a competitor's website and feed all the UX information and implementation into Claude Code to promote the synthesis of an extremely advanced and already engaging design pattern into the project at this point, I would say its a lack of competence to manage a software project or org, any other way. Amazon's deep cuts are a shot across the bow to others that know they need to "do the needful", and will be watched closely
crystal_revenge 8mo ago
So much conversation is around AI replacing developers, but I've been to so many meetings where a middle-manager (gleefully) shows me some AI slop they produced to do their job and I think to myself "If you did this with AI, why don't I do this with AI and replace you?" Most experienced devs already know writing code is the easy part, it's really understanding the business requirements that takes time (I think a lot of junior devs don't understand this so they get overly enthusiastic about AI). But it turns out that most middle managers were already churning out slop to begin with so replacing them with AI is a big improvement. As an engineer, roughly speaking, every task AI helps me get done faster is roughly negated by someone else's AI slop I need to clean up. But when it comes to middle management, I can't tell the difference. I'm pretty sure most product roadmaps generated by AI are actually more sensible than those generated by clueless managers.
boh 8mo ago
It's interesting that the AI is taking job story is so prevalent in these sorts of posts even though there's zero indication of it in any financial analysis. Amazon and big tech companies like it are using AI as the smoke screen to cover up the obvious, which is these companies have lost their ability to grow exponentially. Since their stock price and debt demands this impossible growth, they are now starting the dying process. It will probably take years and maybe even decades, but they will continue to cut costs until they become the next Sears.
- drawnwren 8mo ago
  when you consider AMZN's p/e ratio is under 35 and WMT is closer to 45, what makes you think this?
  - boh 8mo ago
    P/E isn't a future projection. There is literally no analysis that asserts Amazon will achieve the same growth rate in the future that it achieved in the past. It will retain stock value by eating itself for a while (could be a long time), then die.
    - drawnwren 8mo ago
      But it’s priced at a growth rate less than Walmart’s. That’s hardly an extreme growth outlier.
- sublinear 8mo ago
  I agree and I also think a lot of what used to require the cloud is now becoming local and private. Cost structures are changing everywhere, not just in big tech. Hiring has stayed about the same everywhere else and the job descriptions for an SWE in the normal corporate world seem focused on getting off AWS, GCP, etc.
pacifist 8mo ago
Reminds me of the movie Office Space.
rib3ye 8mo ago
usually this is called a program manager, not really a manager (like a people manager) per say...
anon291 8mo ago
Honestly he's probably doing fine That man is clearly very smart and proactive. I'd be worried for the poor middle manager caught completely off guard.
nswest23 8mo ago
People have had jobs where their entire job function was figuring out how to outsource work overseas. When there's no one left to outsource then it's your turn. Tale as old as time.

shermantanktop 8mo ago

Undoubtedly his tool turned out to suck, and his managers realized that it made him faster but didn't eliminate the need for his role. "Every other manager" is a pipe dream and if it's true it means that group is pathetically inefficient and underutilizing the talents of even an average manager. That's what I'd say in 2026. 2-3 years from now, not sure. But right now, AI can't run a vending machine without selling too many tungsten cubes.

theusus 8mo ago

[flagged]

vile_wretch 8mo ago
Yes that is how anecdotes work
- dingnuts 8mo ago
  [dead]

mayhemducks 8mo ago

If I set aside for a moment, and for the sake of argument, the fact that we all have to earn a living, why would anyone want a job where you distill a bunch of input from those "below you" and relay it to those "above you"? That sounds like a job I would never want to get out of bed to do. If I were one of the people fired, I would be so friggen happy I don't have to do this BS job anymore.

samus 8mo ago
> If I set aside for a moment, and for the sake of argument, the fact that we all have to earn a living Congrats for making an argument completely disassociated from reality.
Imustaskforhelp 8mo ago
I guess people need money to buy food to survive? > I would be so friggen happy I don't have to do this BS job anymore. Alright the freezer's empty with no food and you have no money. Probably a family to manage with kids and demands or say have hobbies which costs money. I am an extremely frugal person myself but even I will admit that there is just no way that one can purely just exist without a FIRE & even within FIRE some aspects of FIRE want you to have a job but not only just any job but the job you like. Judging from GP's comment. I feel like the person they are talking about might not have saved enough money so they were a bit worried about it but even if they did, losing a job still impacts mentally and they (didn't?) want to go through such transition. I guess the point is to really save money & be frugal at times. It's usually something which benefits me but I am single right now but I can imagine that with a family & a wife & different dynamics, frugality can be hard to live by when you have to convince your wife to say down-size or your children to & it can impact one's freedom probably. Personally wishing to have a lot of savings to go through when single before getting married. Unironically this & some sense of getting respect within society & getting the prospectus of some good dating connection in such sense is the reason why (many) people look for any jobs. I will admit that if someone offers me such a job, the offer to take will be hard to resist (even though I would consider I have a stronger than average desire for a job that I truly like/enjoy fwiw)

nxm 8mo ago

Actual effective managers do much more than "gathering information from folks below him, distilling it down and reporting that to people above him."

m0llusk 8mo ago
might be able to get a fat contract fee from letting Amazon know about that
conscion 8mo ago
> Actual effective managers do much more And how many managers are effective vs. only information funnels?
- BobbyJo 8mo ago
  The bad ones tend not to be information funnels.
- avalys 8mo ago
  Firing a bunch of ineffective managers because they can easily be replaced by AI seems like a net improvement to me.
  - varjag 8mo ago
    Where are the failed programmers supposed to go then?
    - pc86 8mo ago
      Product Management.
- signal11 8mo ago
  Even “only” information funnels have value if they seek out valuable info, filter, curate. In reality some funnels in this context mutate the message they’re supposed to pass on :-)

paxys 8mo ago

Did you copy paste this from LinkedIn?

datsci_est_2015 8mo ago
lol thank you I was trying to see if anyone else also read this with a raised eyebrow. “Yes so these ICs and other non-management staff are going to be reporting to this LLM and then magic and executives are informed of everything they need to know.”

varispeed 8mo ago

> gathering information from folks below him I thought that information is only available through organic conversations by the watercooler and cross polination of teams. Does it mean you no longer will have to come to office as long as you talk to AI over Slack? Or are they going to slap laptop on a Roomba and still mandate office attendance?

spiritplumber 8mo ago
Let's split the difference and put a brain on a Roomba like in Fallout.

mrtksn 8mo ago

TBH the last 20-30 years was exactly like that but computers were eliminating other peoples jobs for really good profits for the investors and really good salaries for the workers doing the elimination. Before that people were eliminating blue colar workers with highly productive machines and industrial robots. I don't see how eliminating your co-workers is any different. Software ate the world and now AI will eat the "software professionals". When this is over, just like the rust belts there will be code belts where once highly valued software developers will be living in decaying neighborhoods and the politicians will be promising to create software jobs by banning AI.

carlcortright 8mo ago
this is a very pessimistic take could be, but the universe is odd in so many different ways it's hard to be sure
- deleted 8mo ago
  [deleted]
- izzydata 8mo ago
  It feels more like a really optimistic take on AI. I won't say it is impossible, but I haven't seen anything that suggests AI is going to do what OpenAI and Nvidia claims it will.
chrysoprace 8mo ago
There might be a time when software developers become obsolete, and I don't pretend to know the future, but if today's models are anything to go by then it won't happen any time soon. At the end of the day, there'll still be a need for highly skilled technical experts, whatever that job looks like.
- geodel 8mo ago
  > At the end of the day, there'll still be a need for highly skilled technical experts, whatever that job looks like. Well, this is kind of obvious right. Highly skilled people of next generation will do fine. The point is millions of highly skilled successful people of today could soon be below average category, jobless and can be called clueless, stuck in old ways who didn't simply see what is happening in the world. And I am not blaming anyone. Despite seeing changes coming even I am not able to do much either. Just hilariously trying to do "cloud technology" courses which folks did decades back, made money and by now even forgot about it.

robotswantdata 8mo ago

No offence, but this is 5% of what a middle manager does. We automated this task years back without LLMs too.

baxtr 8mo ago

Oh dear. I wish middle management was simply "gathering information" from the decks below and reporting it to the bridge.

aorloff 8mo ago
Tell you what, why don't we get rid of management altogether and just have a flat org ?
- Aurornis 8mo ago
  Been there, done that. It brings its own set of chaos and office politics. The shadow org structures can be worse than the official ones.
- oblio 8mo ago
  Because social animals have hierarchical social structures.
  - hackable_sand 8mo ago
    We also have flat social structures, what is your point?
    - oblio 8mo ago
      Really? How often and for how many people? Which ones dominate and are more frequent, flat or hierarchical? Which ones do we use for our most complex endeavors?
- Bhilai 8mo ago
  > A few years into the company’s life, founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin actually wondered whether Google needed any managers at all. In 2002 they experimented with a completely flat organization, eliminating engineering managers in an effort to break down barriers to rapid idea development and to replicate the collegial environment they’d enjoyed in graduate school. That experiment lasted only a few months: They relented when too many people went directly to Page with questions about expense reports, interpersonal conflicts, and other nitty-gritty issues. And as the company grew, the founders soon realized that managers contributed in many other, important ways—for instance, by communicating strategy, helping employees prioritize projects, facilitating collaboration, supporting career development, and ensuring that processes and systems aligned with company goals. https://hbr.org/2013/12/how-google-sold-its-engineers-on-management https://hbr.org/2013/12/how-google-sold-its-engineers-on-man...

SpaceNoodled 8mo ago

He probably still lives there

tshaddox 8mo ago

> It felt like watching someone who is about to be executed be responsible for building the gallows Perilaus of Athens designed the Brazen Bull, a hollow bronze statue used to roast victims alive. When he presented it to the tyrant Phalaris, Phalaris was so disgusted by the cruelty of the device that he ordered Perilaus to be the first person tested inside it.

toddmorey 8mo ago

“He should’ve been so aware that his job was going to be the first one cut, and he was responsible for building a tool to cut his own job” That tool was going to get built whether he did it or someone else did. Maybe only thing to do is buy time building it while actively looking elsewhere.

Imustaskforhelp 8mo ago
> “He should’ve been so aware that his job was going to be the first one cut, and he was responsible for building a tool to cut his own job” > That tool was going to get built whether he did it or someone else did. Maybe only thing to do is buy time building it while actively looking elsewhere. This has such a dark vibe to it that I am unable to explain. It really feels like an I was only following orders command just hoping that you don't get to the wrong side of this stick as they was hoping for At the same time protest isn't an option. It does feel like some form of active suffering for someone to write the replacement of themselves while the economy goes to complete dumpster fire and nobody's hiring (much). All while Completely pure form of AI slop goes up and up so even any interesting idea or anything will have to fight really hard for attention in public spaces like say show HN or other websites. So you are forced to pay "Internet rent" to the overlords like Google & Meta who will use the same money to then train better models (especially Google?) to continue this cycle. All while people lose their privacy and nobody even talks about it. With all the thousands of problems happening. Can we please just stop this circle just once and evaluate where things are going if they are net positive for humanity itself & if there is anything to stop this cycle. Fundamentally most countries are democracies. Yes there are lobbying efforts but one forgets that these large corpos pay to somehow pursuade you or the politician that you elect. Can someone smart in politics talk about such issues & raise them & a fight towards lobbying/corruption (all throughout the world?) be established. I guess this becomes way too broad of a goal but somehow I always end up feeling corruption and politics & money's lobbying connection can be a root cause of many issues (much throughout the world)
achenatx 8mo ago
the answer is build it again and start selling it to other companies.

deleted 8mo ago

[deleted]

Aurornis 8mo ago

> He told me that he had worked to develop a tool that would replace effectively all of the middle management function that he was responsible for: gathering information from folks below him, distilling it down and reporting that to people above him. Any manager whose job was this simple was on borrowed time anyway. I think the person was feeding you a story around the campfire to impress you. Real management work doesn't operate like this.

retinaros 8mo ago
lol. it does. its a good description of about 90% of the mgrs
- simianparrot 8mo ago
  Seems like Amazon is doing the right thing cutting down its corporate workforce then.
complianceowl 8mo ago
[dead]
jdmg94 8mo ago
you would be amazed at the amount of middle managers who keep failing upwards in organizations like Amazon
- ganoushoreilly 8mo ago
  Happens in the Govt too. I think it's pretty common that if you can "sell a story" you're in a better spot than simply doing well at the job.
  - NicoJuicy 8mo ago
    That's literally the current president

babyoil 8mo ago

You should watch this movie: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1527793/ https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1527793/

mjevans 8mo ago
Or Office Space (warning, Rated R for some language and crude distractions / conversations.) https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0151804 https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0151804 Still, it documents the typical work culture of the US in the late 1990s / early 2000s. It's sad and amazing how much of that remains the same.

socalgal2 8mo ago

I'm super sympathetic that losing your job sucks. I lost mine once. At the same time, what's the alternative? Progress happens. We no longer have liveries for holding horses nor horse shoe makers (not at the level we used to). We no longer have telephone operators. Making up jobs to keep people employed isn't a viable solution to me. Supporting them in some way (re-training, UBI, service work, ...) seems like the only way forward. I guess maybe I can imagine making it harder to fire people so you have to find something to do with them. But that also has negative consequences. Small companies won't/can't hire because they can't make the guarantees big companies can.

paul7986 8mo ago
Just lost my UX Researcher, Designer, UI Developer and CX Support job (8 years) two weeks of ago. They said doing a great job but have to lay you off. Within a week i put my house up for sale and received an offer. Time to downsize, "try," to stay in tech yet study to be a nurse. My field and career of 20 years seems like a vanishing one.
- Imustaskforhelp 8mo ago
  Sorry to hear that. But coming to this point, its absolutely unfathomable seeing the difference between these two types of things On One hand we have cursor whose burning like 5-6 Million $ of money in trying to build a browser only for it to be riddled with bugs and literally just the money went into fire (read emsh's post and how he built better alternative) I mean I guess I learnt something from them burning 5 million $ but I see a lot of Companies burn so much money. My point is that all of these companies burn massive amounts of money in LLM's sometimes just for the sake of it and then some of these same companies go the other way and then fire people working. I mean is there no way for a company to be reasonable. You worked there 8 years, You knew how things worked. Getting anyone new up and running would be hard especially given you had customer relations. Tf they mean doing a great job but they have to lay you off? I mean, is the company doing really bad (I am considering something like tailwind happening here?) or what exactly. But tailwind's situation was (unique?) because their business was eaten by AI itself. Not sure about your (former) company though but I hope that you can tell more specifics if possible.

learingsci 8mo ago

Where was he from? Recent hires are sometimes the first to go, depending on certain other factors.

aprdm 8mo ago

If that's his value add as a manager then that's a problem in itself

diyseguy 8mo ago

I have always felt that if I could do a job really well, do work that required no maintenance, was basically 'self-healing' so to speak, with documentation so clear and easy to understand that someone could pick up where I left off without asking me a single question. For me that was always my aesthetic and goal in any work I did. Yet, here I am, an experienced software engineer, unemployed for over a year now. It still seems to me the right ideal, so the 'karmic' outcome feels unjust really.

hintymad 8mo ago

> He told me that he had worked to develop a tool that would replace effectively all of the middle management function that he was responsible for: gathering information from folks below him, distilling it down and reporting that to people above him. That sounds an organizational issue. I always thought that a manager should push product vision at their own level, get and organize resources, and assess the talent as fairly as possible. That is, a combination of the job of a general and a PM. Controlling the information may be necessary for survival, but it should not be the job description.

Mars008 8mo ago
> I always thought that a manager should push product vision at their own level, get and organize resources, and assess the talent as fairly as possible. LOL, reality is very different. Manager first of all is working to keep his position, second to get promoted. Most of them. For keeping he need to become irreplaceable. For that they create kill zone around eliminating competitors. Working against those with brain, not promoting, giving negative reviews, creating 'cases', taking credits for others job. Making those who can leave. I've seen a lot of this shit. This creates a local depressive shithole. It can go for decades in monopolies and in low competition markets.

motbus3 8mo ago

If he was a middle manager it wasn't him doing the work anyway

jmspring 8mo ago

There is a lot of middle management. I would include PMs in this. Salesforce does planning from Benioff down. Goals -> each report goals, etc. Planning based off goals - much horse trading. Planning from the lead/pm level - weekly - more horse trading. Reality was urgent stuff got taken care of. Literally over a two year period, outside fancy wording, the technical component of the initial goals maybe completed 30%. There are a lot of inefficiencies I can see what this manager at AWS was trying to optimize for.

yieldcrv 8mo ago

I'm in a well funded somewhat greenfield org - not a startup - we use mcp servers of that specific ticket tracking system within the coding tools to handle ticket creation, assignment, tracking, status, completion, updated by what code is being hit. mostly inheriting existing workflows like git comments, pull requests, tickets referenced in those already, just AI writes those commit messages and PR comments too. reports about all of that are made by AI as well to the stakeholder that needs to see that distilled in their language. We won't be hiring middle management, no product managers, no engineering managers, VPs The only aspect we don't have solved is a buffer between sales/execs and engineers, but all other functions are automated away alongside other AI assisted coding that there actually is bandwidth for the schizophrenic ideas. Things that used to be tech debt and not prioritized by engineers without management suddenly are all solved, AI makes the cleanest REST API's I've ever seen, obscure verbs properly implemented immediately. Test cases all done. It's working really well and the friction with non technical PMs and hierarchies is gone its a 1 liner to add relevant mcp servers to Claude Code, and every ticket tracker already has an mcp server out for triaging between UX designers, we also just don't. we use an mcp server for UX, I can point playwright - which is usually used for testing your own site - at a competitor's website and feed all the UX information and implementation into Claude Code to promote the synthesis of an extremely advanced and already engaging design pattern into the project at this point, I would say its a lack of competence to manage a software project or org, any other way. Amazon's deep cuts are a shot across the bow to others that know they need to "do the needful", and will be watched closely

crystal_revenge 8mo ago

So much conversation is around AI replacing developers, but I've been to so many meetings where a middle-manager (gleefully) shows me some AI slop they produced to do their job and I think to myself "If you did this with AI, why don't I do this with AI and replace you?" Most experienced devs already know writing code is the easy part, it's really understanding the business requirements that takes time (I think a lot of junior devs don't understand this so they get overly enthusiastic about AI). But it turns out that most middle managers were already churning out slop to begin with so replacing them with AI is a big improvement. As an engineer, roughly speaking, every task AI helps me get done faster is roughly negated by someone else's AI slop I need to clean up. But when it comes to middle management, I can't tell the difference. I'm pretty sure most product roadmaps generated by AI are actually more sensible than those generated by clueless managers.

boh 8mo ago

It's interesting that the AI is taking job story is so prevalent in these sorts of posts even though there's zero indication of it in any financial analysis. Amazon and big tech companies like it are using AI as the smoke screen to cover up the obvious, which is these companies have lost their ability to grow exponentially. Since their stock price and debt demands this impossible growth, they are now starting the dying process. It will probably take years and maybe even decades, but they will continue to cut costs until they become the next Sears.

drawnwren 8mo ago
when you consider AMZN's p/e ratio is under 35 and WMT is closer to 45, what makes you think this?
- boh 8mo ago
  P/E isn't a future projection. There is literally no analysis that asserts Amazon will achieve the same growth rate in the future that it achieved in the past. It will retain stock value by eating itself for a while (could be a long time), then die.
  - drawnwren 8mo ago
    But it’s priced at a growth rate less than Walmart’s. That’s hardly an extreme growth outlier.
sublinear 8mo ago
I agree and I also think a lot of what used to require the cloud is now becoming local and private. Cost structures are changing everywhere, not just in big tech. Hiring has stayed about the same everywhere else and the job descriptions for an SWE in the normal corporate world seem focused on getting off AWS, GCP, etc.

pacifist 8mo ago

Reminds me of the movie Office Space.

rib3ye 8mo ago

usually this is called a program manager, not really a manager (like a people manager) per say...

anon291 8mo ago

Honestly he's probably doing fine That man is clearly very smart and proactive. I'd be worried for the poor middle manager caught completely off guard.

nswest23 8mo ago

People have had jobs where their entire job function was figuring out how to outsource work overseas. When there's no one left to outsource then it's your turn. Tale as old as time.