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Re:More big companies bet they can still grow without hiring by kulahan on Monday October 27, 2025 @01:15PM (#45723651)
AI, to me, seems perfectly positioned to replace a lot of middle managers. Maybe not "every manager at X level", but if you've got some central tool that flows information up and down the chain, and can dig into data on your local network for backup/proof, you could make most middle managers much more efficient. Suddenly, one scrum master covering 4 teams is very feasible. They already know what they need to know, and their status has been reported long before they even started the meeting.
Re:More big companies bet they can still grow without hiring by orwin on Monday October 27, 2025 @04:16PM (#45725759)
I'm pretty sure AI would advantageously replace high level executive and McKinsey-type consulting (or most consulting even), but middle manager i'm not too sure. Depends on your company and what their job is.
Re:More big companies bet they can still grow without hiring by Esophagus4 on Monday October 27, 2025 @02:45PM (#45724769)
I could see a world where a manager is able to cover more teams, reducing the need for as many layers / middle managers.

Like… for year end reviews and bonuses, a manager might have a dashboard of feedback from an AI of everyone’s technical accomplishments, as AI can review their PRs and designs. At that point, an AI could even rank engineers based on contributions, so the manager just verifies that the feedback is all correct.

Not saying that’s necessarily a good thing, but I could see a world where that happens. It already does seem to with Amazon warehouse workers.

Re:More big companies bet they can still grow without hiring by collingreen on Monday October 27, 2025 @10:00PM (#45728523)
Isn't that basically the doge story once the agencies investigating Tesla were shut down? One of the people policy said they didn't think anybody should actually be using their code
Re:More big companies bet they can still grow without hiring by rightbyte on Monday October 27, 2025 @02:01PM (#45724294)
The Scrum lords and managers might use LLMs to add beurocratic complexity instead of becoming efficient.
Re:More big companies bet they can still grow without hiring by tart-lemonade on Monday October 27, 2025 @04:55PM (#45726169)
Alternatively, it could become more efficient at creating inefficiencies.

Imagine pushing your vibe-coded changes triggering a CI hook that uses an LLM to create a TPS report per commit+pipeline in a merge request, which another LLM-based bureaucrat could use to decide whether the MR should be approved, generating its own TPS reports in turn which some middle manager could use their LLM to summarize.

Think of all the shareholder value we could create by going all-in on AI!

Re:More big companies bet they can still grow without hiring by Gigachad on Monday October 27, 2025 @05:24PM (#45726476)
The number of vibe coded PRs clogging up the review queues is going up. When you ask the submitter what some nonsense line of code is doing and what it's for, they have no idea. Slowing the whole process down.
Re:More big companies bet they can still grow without hiring by derwiki on Monday October 27, 2025 @06:22PM (#45727021)
It definitely takes me more time to review PRs now, and I have more PRs to review. Agent created code seems “fine” but also seems like 30% more than is needed (total SWAG)
Re:More big companies bet they can still grow without hiring by Gigachad on Monday October 27, 2025 @06:48PM (#45727245)
The worst part is how it destroys your implicit trust that the author ran and understood the code. The generated code looks fine but doesn't actually work because it was never run. So to properly review PRs today you have to spend a lot longer assuming nothing works and every detail needs to be carefully tested.
Re:More big companies bet they can still grow without hiring by derwiki on Monday October 27, 2025 @11:00PM (#45728826)
Is there’s no screenshots of it working or logs from a console showing it working, I kinda presume it won’t. In a previous role that was more front end facing (tablet experience for self driving cars), I had a few coworkers who would put out PRs that I knew could not have worked and were not tested. My nudge was “oh can you add a screenshot to the PR?” And they would realize it didn’t work and get back to me in a few days. Been dealing with this since before gen AI produced code haha.