Neil Patel argues that managers who also do hands-on work will outperform pure managers as AI reshapes workplaces. He pushes back on the idea that people management alone loses value, instead emphasizing how player-coach managers mentor junior staff and combine experience with fresh talent.
So Brian Chesky, Airbnb CEO, says, I don't think that people managers will have any value in the future. And I think what he really means by that is that pure people managers are in trouble. But if you're a people manager and you know how to individually contribute, you'll be fine.
Yeah, it goes back to being a player coach. I do believe there's going to be people managers in the future. I've always believed that managers, at least in my company, our managers are all player coaches. I don't know one manager that's not a player coach in which they'll get their hands dirty and help manage. The reason I don't believe managers go to zero, let's use marketing for example. If you've been in the industry for 20 years, so like we have an ad agency similar to Eric, ours is called NP Digital, and we have managers who have been in the ad agency space literally more than 20, 30 years. And then we have new people as well who have been doing it for 2, 3 years. What's valuable about offices, and I know I'm switching, but it'll all make sense in a bit. What's valuable about offices is when people come in person, the younger people get to learn learn from the people with more experience and it helps them improve their skills faster, at least from what we've seen. This is also why people managers are important is because if they're a player coach and they're good at what they do, they have a lot of experience. Even if it's virtual, it's not in person. The younger people may not be learning as quickly, but the younger people will gain a lot of knowledge by just being around seasoned managers who are willing to share and help them out.
You know, At least with my observation, Neil, with the younger people right now that just pick it up, it's very easy to train kids on AI when they're— and I call them kids because they're in college or some of them coming out of high school— when there's no— when it's an empty slate and they're opening to just listen to everything. Now, that being said, you still need to mix it with experience.
