I Watched 3 Companies Lay Off Their Managers. All 3 Hit the Same Wall.

Podcast · ~33 min · Podcast

• Decompose management into three distinct functions: information routing (AI handles readily), sense-making (resists automation; requires contextual judgment), and accountability & feedback (irreplaceable by LLMs at current capability levels).
• Kimi, Block, and Meta represent three different experiments in flattening management — all three encountered the same wall: removing the sense-making and accountability layers causes coordination failures that AI cannot patch.
• The failure mode is cutting “load-bearing structure” — teams confuse information routing (automatable) with sense-making (not automatable) and remove both simultaneously.
• Practical takeaway: use a decomposition playbook before restructuring; map which management functions you are automating vs. eliminating vs. preserving — the distinction determines whether the restructure succeeds or collapses.