It's the End of the Manager as We Know It

I am lucky, I never worked for a terrible boss. The worst managers I've had were government bureaucrats: part of the machine, floating on top of things waiting to cash in on their retirement. But they were fun to be around and kept people going. I can't call this bad management.

"Bad" managers thrive in an environment that incentivizes what I'd call "theatrical management practices". Management is seen as a "reward" (read: a title of importance) where high performers can start "handing assignments" (read: giving orders). This is the stereotypical "hall monitor" who runs around the cubicles telling you to keep quiet. At the same time, they prepare a PowerPoint to take credit for other people's work.

Whether we're looking at recent tech layoffs, the new stricter return to office policies, or the new generation of AI-powered work apps, I can't help but feel some relief: we're about to enter a new era where theatrical management practices will become obsolete. It has to. The future of work is on the line.

Managers Managing Managers Managing Managers

We've got an over-management problem. Whether the individuals are terrible, average, or even excellent, organizations got too many. The Harvard Business Review evaluated there was 1 manager for every 4.7 employees in the United States in 2016. The article claims the number could be raised to 1:10 without a hiccup based on estimates of "low-value management processes" such as performance reviews and budgeting. In a nutshell: theatrical management practices.

Mark Zuckerberg seems to agree. He said in Meta's latest earning conference:

“I don’t think you want a management structure that’s just managers managing managers, managing managers, managing managers, managing the people who are doing the work.”

After the layoffs come "efficiency". We often hear the "more with less" mantra. Theatrical management would have the boss put harder pressure on employees so they output more "work", whatever that means. Meta prefers eliminating bureaucratic waste.

Meta is not alone in "efficiency mode". Apple is too, and their conclusions may shock you...

The Quiet War over the Return to the Office Heats Up

Apple wants employees back in the office 3 days/week and is checking badge access logs to verify compliance. Apple always has been an "office-first" company. This Medium post explains how Steve Jobs designed the Pixar offices to maximize "accidental experiences" or "chance encounters" between employees in order to foster "community". Salesforce's CEO used the expression "tribal knowledge" to define similar phenomena.

Are these encounters overrated? This article from The Atlantic paints the return to the office as a way for middle managers to enforce theatrical management, give themselves self-importance when directing meetings, and overlooking closely at their reports' actions.  

I wrote about a study from Future.com that suggested "water cooler talk" had a limited effect, claiming only 10% of interactions happen between people whose desks were more than 500 meters apart. Then I walked 500 meters. It took me 6 minutes. It's a wonder anybody walks 6 minutes to get a coffee!

I struggle with distancing myself from my own experiences here. As somebody who comes to the office 3-5 days a week, I enjoy the interactions with people I would never have the chance to work with. I feel knowing people through face-to-face interactions makes me more efficient.

What gives? How do we reconcile remote work being good for an individual, and in-office being better for organizations?

As I wrote in The Future of Work Feels Like Home, the best way to bring back employees to the office is to make the workplace attractive in a new way that values wellness.

Ditch the cubicles! Ditch the rows of computers! Leave room for lounge spaces and community areas, where serendipitous conversations can arise freely. One thing is certain, a theatrical manager has no place in this setting. They need to go away.

And what about the benefits of remote work? In this new hybrid setting...

AI-Powered Productivity Can Save Us

This week, Microsoft announced OpenAI's integration into Teams. As a self-confessed Teams hater, even I have to admit that if Microsoft can deliver on its ambitions, Teams will lift every knowledge worker in the world. Imagine: you agree on action items in a weekly planning meeting, and the AI somehow creates all the tasks in your project management system, the follow-up Outlook meetings, and sends a summary to absentees... It's the office assistant we've dreamed of... except for the ugly user interface and slow-as-hell Sharepoint back-end, that is.

There's a lot of hype around ChatGPT, but it's these little innovations that justify the $10 Billion investment from Microsoft. Think about all the time spent on theatrical management: budget burn rate charts, timesheet compilation, delivery status reports, capacity planning... all this could be automated with AI soon.      

Managers Are Not Going Away

The focus on efficiency, tensions over a return to the office and the rise of mainstream AI create the perfect storm to do away with old mentalities.

Managers' numbers need to shrink, but they aren't all going away. I'd argue they will even remain amongst the highest-paid employees on staff! But their tasks will fundamentally go back to what they should have been all along: coaches who can get the best out of every person and make the collective effort greater than the sum of its parts.

Why am I so confident about the future of managers? Team-building and personal development require empathy, the only skill AI can never truly have.

🥊 Latest In Tech

Privacy and Cybersecurity

• FBI Takes down the vicious Hive ransomware group. I reported before about Hive's tactics, which included striking healthcare facilities and putting human lives in danger. The FBI had infiltrated the group and was distributing decryption keys to victims. This type of action is exactly what we need from the FBI. Let's give credit where credit's due, kudos FBI!  Story
• ODIN Intelligence tech company is hacked: exposes facial recognition data and police raids. In the second ppfosec newsletter back in July I expressed concerns over private government contractors' ability to secure the mass surveillance data they collected. Here, I hate being right. This type of data is extremely dangerous and organized crime will always attempt to seize it. Story
• Popular customer service software Zendesk hacked. The employees fell for a "smishing attack" (SMS phishing). The hack is tied to the 0ktapus group, which attacked Twilio and Cloudflare last year. If high-tech companies who, by all means, employ highly technical and security-aware people, succumb to these attacks, what makes you feel safer? And the corporate awareness videos won't get us out of there either. Story
• Advanced hacking groups advertise jobs similar to legit companies. With the recent mass layoffs in tech, one has to wonder how many pentesters will turn to the dark side. Worse, we could be in for real-life reenactments of The Firm, where promising young professionals end up working for a criminal entity, unbeknownst to them.  Story

Business of Tech

• Senior STEM Students Hack University Diversity Metrics to Find Mates. This week's funniest story comes from a university professor seeking help about senior engineering students who have created a dating app using the university's diversity metrics to register into the junior classes where there are the most females of certain preferred ethnicities. Story
• Apple still plodding along with its AR project. Despite contradictory reports, a recent leak suggests Apple is approaching developers to build AR-based apps. The Apple AR set will likely determine the fate of headsets. As in: if Apple can't get this wearable out of gaming niches, nobody else can. That would not bode well for Meta. Story

Artificial Intelligence

• Google launches Bard, its ChatGPT competitor. I wrote last week about Google's current crisis. Bard is merely a publicity stunt to show Google is still in the game. Short term, tech enthusiasts win as they will be able to experiment with new technology and create awesome stuff. Story
• Microsoft counter-attacks with the new Bing, powered by GPT-4. New Bing's biggest feature seems to be the ability to gather insight from around the web and cite its sources. Monetization remains a big question mark. Story.
• OpenAI launches a Text Classifier tool to detect AI-generated content. This is what teachers need! Resistance to AI is futile. Having exams on paper may seem like a wise short-term move, but long-term students learn to work with AI because AI exists. Cannot live in a vacuum. We're in for quite an arm's race anyway to separate the detectors from new producers of AI content. I still advocate for the "reverse Turing test": content these days must feel like it comes from a human with a rich life full of experiences. Story

❓ Question of the Week

What was your worst experience with a manager?