Middle manager proposes to company owner replacing staff with AI, gets replaced himself: 'I have took his suggestions to heart and decided to automate his role'

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Brad Dickson • Managing Editor
May 23, 2024 10:00 AM EDT

It's hard to escape the conversation surrounding AI and the growing likelihood that we may soon find our jobs replaced by it. Yet, while some have attempted it, most seem to be falling short of success. While AI is proven to be effective at handling superfluous and repetitive work, it doesn't yet understand the subtlety and nuance of specific tasks, often lacking necessary details or fabricating information and then confidently reporting it as fact. So, at the very least, even where there is efficiency to be gained through the use of these new tools, you still need someone with a deep enough understanding of the work to audit the information or product that the AI generates.

But, of course, with it being the latest buzz, every muddling middle manager has been frothing at the chance to be the hero of their organization, dreaming of the accolades and promotions they will earn by serving up their subordinates jobs on a silver platter to their AI overlords, forgetting that their paper pushing and communication is one of the things that can be most easily replaced. This manager learned that lesson when they approached their boss about utilizing AI to replace their team's jobs, finding that their boss took their advice—just not in the way that they had in mind. 

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  • 01
    "Middle manager wants to replace his coworkers with Al? I'll let him throw the first stone."
    via Christopher Burns
  • 02
    Middle manager wants to replace his coworkers with AI? I'll let him throw the first stone. S ос I own a managed service provider (MSP) firm which provides cloud computing services to clients. Business is good enough to pay my employees a respectable wage, while offering them a good work-life balance. I haven't had to lay off a single employee yet.
    via u/CompetitionExtreme36
  • 03
    I hired a senior IT technician as a middle manager, let's call him Harry. Harry seems to have gone off the rails. about AI. He has started to micromanaging our coworkers to an unacceptable extent, and he has kept on pestering me to investigate how I could use ChatGPT and other AI technologies to reduce employee costs.
    via u/CompetitionExtreme36
  • 04
    Frankly, this rubbed me the wrong way. Harry doesn't have a stake in any of his coworkers losing their jobs, and his constant micromanaging had become an issue. Moreso, I looked at ChatGPT and there's simply no way it could replace any of my technical employees. ChatGPT has no agency, nor can it deal with clients, nor can it see the computer screen to troubleshoot jacksh*t.
    via u/CompetitionExtreme36
  • 05
    However, ChatGPT could easily replace a middle manager, assuming someone else takes on some additional responsibility daily. You see ChatGPT has a Code Interpreter mode (which can do calculations and process spreadsheets). This can decimate the workload of a middle manager (at least in our firm), allowing their responsibilities to be absorbed by another senior employee (me in this case).
    via u/CompetitionExtreme36
  • 06
    I kept this in mind and have been shadowing Harry's job for the past few months. A good employee retired last week. I approached Harry and told him that I took his suggestions to heart, and have decided to automate his role with AI. I told him he could accept his redundancy package or be retrained in Azure. He chose to be retrained in Azure.
    via u/CompetitionExtreme36
  • 07
    Unfortunately for Harry, he'll lose the comfy privileges being a middle manager entails. Fortunately for our coworkers, they will have an impartial AI making decisions. Fortunately for me, I won't have to pay for a redundant role.
    via u/CompetitionExtreme36
  • 08
    Vore_Daddy I never thought leopards would eat MY face. Says the middle manager who voted for the leopards eating people's faces.
    via u/CompetitionExtreme36
  • 09
    Mountain-Butterfly38 Funny how his own suggestion came back and hurt him. I'm sure the employees appreciate it. Great MC!
    via u/CompetitionExtreme36
  • 10
    SourcePrevious3095 Middle management, the true purpose of AI. We have too many managers anyway.
    via u/CompetitionExtreme36
  • 11
    PlayerSalt Man backstabbing man for AI. AI replacing the backstabbing traitor to mankind. Half of me can't wait for AI to figure out how to turn people into batteries the other half of me is horrified
    via u/CompetitionExtreme36
  • 12
    TheDocJ "A computer once beat me at chess, but it was no match for me at kick boxing." Emo Philips
    via u/CompetitionExtreme36
  • 13
    EchoGecko795 A another manager told me that its going to when they replace me with AI. I said, yep, too bad for you as well, if they can replace me with AI, they can darn well replace him with it. He got mad about it.
    via u/CompetitionExtreme36
  • 14
    Patriae8182 My company's CTO has a fair bit of experience with AI from his previous work in Silicon Valley, and he has done a fantastic job of stomping this kinda out whenever a manager so much as hints at replacing people. The CTO reminds them that middle managers are the most replaceable people on our staff.
    via u/CompetitionExtreme36
  • 15
    steggun_cinargo He's going to try to do his new job with AI, I guarantee it
    via u/CompetitionExtreme36
  • 16
    Coolbeanschilly It all makes sense now, middle management is no better than AI drivel. No wonder middle management holds so many meetings, they need to read the speeches their programming spat out.
    via u/CompetitionExtreme36
  • 17
    FactorOk4741 Ok here's the thing about ai: you need a pair of human eyes to determine if the results are actually accurate and satisfactory for the task at hand.
    via u/CompetitionExtreme36
  • 18
    coldfirewolf I don't know if anyone has posted this yet, but I noticed something that I want to give you upvote points about aside from the overall story. It's your business but you called your employees "our coworkers". I've worked in I.T. over the last decade and having a manager/director that was right there with me figuring stuff out, at a lesser extent for them I understand they have other responsibilities, and coming up with solutions was one of the keys of staying with that company as lon
    via u/CompetitionExtreme36
  • 19
    1lluminist There is a Venn diagram of people who want to replace workers with AI. One circle is "Managers" the other circle is "People who have never used AI" It would probably be amazing to work for a company whose management has been gutted and replaced with AI. Sure the intelligence would be artificial, but it's better than the complete void that's there these days. There's also the added benefit in the form of the "Savings:Jobs Cut" ratio
    via u/CompetitionExtreme36

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workplace discussion workplace-stories toxic-manager jobs job malicious compliance work managers workplace artificial intelligence workplace malicious compliance employment in the workplace
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