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The loudest voices in tech keep predicting the same thing.

AI will gut middle management. Flat orgs. AI-native pods. One person directing a fleet of agents. The manager is overhead. The manager is coordination tax. The manager is obsolete.

Brian Armstrong made the case most explicitly last month. Coinbase cut 14% of its workforce. Out: "pure managers." In: "player-coaches." Spans up to 15 direct reports. Org chart capped at five layers.

His line getting traction: "pure managers slow things down and create coordination tax."

He's right. Those managers deserved to go. But they should have gone well before AI.

"Bad managers should be replaced" doesn't equal "AI replaces managers."

Armstrong and his peers aren’t killing management.
They’re killing the version that was already broken.

And then using AI as the explanation.

Except…

Every confident "AI will eliminate X" prediction crashes into the same historical wall.

Technology advances tend to follow a similar, counterintuitive pattern.

Bank tellers after the ATM should be obsolete.
Turn out they doubled.

Radiologists after AI diagnostics will be irrelevant.
Nearly all radiology centers are AI-assisted.
And there aren’t enough radiologist to meet demand.

The BCG study on AI-assisted consultants: 40% higher quality output, which created demand for more consulting, not less.

The pattern has a name: Jevons Paradox. When a task gets cheaper, demand for the underlying outcome grows faster than the per-unit cost falls. Total consumption goes up.

Applied here: AI makes coordination, synthesis, and first drafts cheaper. Demand for good decisions, deployed teams, and executed strategy grows. You need more management. Just delivered differently.

Block, Snap, Meta, and Atlassian are all running variants of the same play. The framing in the press is "AI replaces managers." The truth is "we fired the managers who were already failing, and used AI as cover."

But how manager leads is changing. Here’s how to rethink your week reorganizes around three zones.

Zone 1: AI does it. You spot-check.

This used to fill 40-60% of a manager's week. It shouldn't anymore.

Zone 2: You and AI together.

This is where good managers get 2-3x leverage. The work gets lighter. The judgment gets your heavy focus.

Zone 3: You. Full stop.

AI can light the path. It can't take the step.

Most managers have historically run 60% Zone 1, 10% Zone 3.
Most managers have historically been underperformers.
It explains why they fail at a rate of 60%.

The target is the reverse. It has always been the reverse. The best leaders were smart enough to defend their teams against any nonsense activities that could sneak into Zone 1. And minimize time spent on what was left. Usually with technology or delegation.

But it was possible, especially in larger orgs, to hide behind the burden of Zone 1.

That’s where AI changed things. It is better than almost anyone you can hire at that type of work. And you don’t need to be a developer to deploy it.

This isn't a threat. It's a brief.

The managers getting cut aren't being replaced by AI. They're being exposed by it. The coordination tax, the status theater, the email forwarding. AI made that work visible for what it always was: low leverage.

The managers who thrive are the ones who move up the stack. More problem selection. More coaching. More judgment under ambiguity. More owning the standard.

If anything, the bar goes up. Not down.

Three moves to make this week:

The manager AI replaces was already replaceable.

The manager AI amplifies is the one who builds the operating system to run the work, so they can focus on the work that actually matters.

That's what we're building in the Second Brain workshop on June 4. If you want to be the player-coach, not the pure manager, start here. Then layer in the 6 foundational playbooks of strong leadership here.

Go into the second half for 2026 ahead of the curve, not on the chopping block.

Teams don't lead themselves.
Never have. Never will.

We're not going anywhere.
We just need to keep getting better.

Lead on,
Dave & Mar