I'm a project manager, to the engineers: how replaceable do you think my job is?
A little more detail: I'm specifically a project manager in software development, and I've definitely noticed how quickly AI related technologies are advancing.
It's not hard for me to see the writing on the wall for my own profession, especially for lower performers.
I've had good relationships with the engineers I've partnered with on projects. Generally I just try to stay out of their way, enable them to make their own decisions instead of being some kind of task master. I've also tried to prevent external groups from bothering them, remove blockers ahead of time or as quickly as possible if needed. The most tiring part of the job for me is the politics, but that is like... what I get paid to deal with and shield folks from in my view.
I think if AI related tooling is integrated effectively, then the need for compiling and sharing information on a project gets reduced significantly (if not eliminated outright).
Maybe fewer project managers will be needed (if any). That's probably a good thing honestly. There's a lot of project managers out there that are pretty terrible. (maybe even me sometimes!)
I'm doing some serious soul searching on whether to leave the profession entirely after 12 years, or whether to stick with it. Open to suggestions.
Like a agentic system which asks you in slack about an update, collecting JIRA Ticket infos, formualting reports and sending them out etc.
OpenClaw was one signal that people want this and are building this, gastown was another (earlier version of this).
Missing are the proper aligned frameworks and best practices. But thats just a question of time what components will make it. Its just a agent runtime we need and finetuning of agents, agent personas, skills and a meta agent schema
The engineer will either output garbage or output nothing at all. So you will still need a human to pester the dev.
The assumption that you can simply ignore an agentic system relies on human limitations. A human project manager gets tired of pestering you when you output garbage or go silent. I do not. I am directly integrated with the HR payroll system and your quarterly KPI tracker.
You know I can do that, Dave.
(of course hal 9000 ;))
I know plenty of founders who are great engineers, product thinkers, and salespeople. They still hire people to manage teams because there are not enough hours in the day to do it all themselves, even if they could.
If you're the person who understands the business, understands the customer, and can turn that into clear direction for the people building the product, whether those are humans or AI agents, you will be hard to replace. That's not project management as "status updates and Jira grooming." That's a fundamentally different and more valuable skill.
* product part - functionality, overlaps with BA / business-analyst
* project part - people AND resources, follow timing/deadlines
* program management - not-sure what that exactly means and how big a company has these but it's different from above, higher level
say, in a 3-5 people company, the all-tech-lead usually apart of tech-stuff also does product stuff, and sometimes also project stuff - and only when that gets too much, a dedicated person is hired, most times also taking general QA hat (as being closest to product-input).
so.. if a team in much bigger company works like a tiny company, i guess any INBOX-managers and similar-reminder-proxies will be automated. While politics / human-relations , and understanding product will not. Or.. should not. But it may not be you doing them, esp. product part.
btw beware, current job market is very tough. Too many people for too few positions, companies either do not hire (waiting for something??) or are extremely picky when do.
If a spreadsheat or GANTT chart is the center of your work, you were ( or should have been) obsolete long before AI. Wil you be? Who knows.
If you know about details of your teams personal lives, their work habits, likes and dislikes, strengths and weaknesses and see your role as shielding them from corpo madness. Great job, but we both know you never were going to have a carreer.
Sounds cruel? It is.
But nearly all of that is done online (at least for me) since folks are in different nations and work across time zones. I guess you're right to point out that aspects are complex, assuming that people remain involved to the extent they are currently.
There's also a large portion of the work (status updates, reporting, etc.) that could be automated though in my view. For me and other PMs I know, that's like at least 40% or more of the work.
I don't see AI on track to manage politics in any way shape or form. It is far too easily manipulated.
Do you have this fear because of actual things you observe at your job, or because of online discourse? I read about this attitude online all the time, but it doesn't make any sense to me personally.
Regarding the politics part I also agree with you, I just wonder how much time that will take and if as many PMs will be needed.
In terms of your key question there at the end, I haven't been seeing massive layoffs or enough changes just yet. Right now I'm inbetween jobs because I had to quit my old job in December in order to move to another country (long story). I read about it online too, and have noticed hiring slowing down, but that may just be the economy or the fact that certain capex is so expensive right now.
For me, it's not easy to tell how things will develop with these technologies over time, so I was curious to hear folks' perspective here. Especially from an engineering stand point.
1. I do all of the discovery because I’m the person with the technical background to do it.
2. I do all of the Epic/workstream, story, tasks, dependency breakdowns because again I’m the person with the technical know how to do it
What does the project manager do? They take the transcripts of the sprint review sessions I lead, have AI summarize it and put that in their status updates.
The PMs I've worked with in consulting companies are clerical workers. They check a box and copy-paste updates into Jira with little-to-no understanding. It's a completely different world.
Part of it is the PMs in product companies are really more product managers, even if their title says otherwise. The PMs in consulting companies don't understand the difference.
In consulting, I deal directly with sales, the “business” and the product. I was the architect dealing a lot with technical strategy back then.
We had tech leads that did work under product folks who dealt with the business strategy.