About whether AI will replace middle managers, under a simulator of moving from engineer to manager.
Has this happened?
Yes 15 (12%)Not sure 33 (26%)No 77 (62%)
Votes cast 1–2 October 2026: 100,590 votes from 9,694 people.
Hacker News has set AI a lot of challenges over the years. Which ones has it met?
About whether AI will replace middle managers, under a simulator of moving from engineer to manager.
Votes cast 1–2 October 2026: 100,590 votes from 9,694 people.
I actually ran this specific 'Backchannel VP' scenario through raw GPT-4 before building the hard-coded version, and the results were surprisingly 'meh.'
The missing piece wasn't intelligence, but statefulness and emotional memory.
A human manager (or VP) remembers that you embarrassed them in a meeting three weeks ago, and that hidden state dictates their reaction today. LLMs—currently—are too 'forgiving' and rational. They don't hold grudges or play power games naturally.
Until AI can simulate that messy, long-term 'political capital' (or lack thereof), I think we still need humans to navigate other humans. But I agree, for pure PR review and logical feedback, I'd take an AI manager any day!