AI Makes Bad Managers
Know where AI is a crutch and where it's an abstraction.
It’s performance-review season and I’m watching managers kneecap their careers. Gleefully they share the best prompts to have ChatGPT write their performance assessments - exactly the sort of shortcut that guarantees they’ll never get better at the job.
Below, we’ll break down why AI’s leaky interface is a crutch, not an abstraction layer, and how leaning on it is already stunting growth.
Performance Assessments
Performance write-ups feel brutal because you’re not great at management. Great managers improvise on feedback the way a jazz soloist riffs on a theme - always on, always smooth. That fluency only comes from thousands of hours of uncomfortable reps: hard conversations, careful wordsmithing, and the stress of getting it right.
A performance assessment is management boiled down to a page. It demands precision, empathy, and strategic thinking. Offloading that to AI means skipping the workout; your team might hear something that sounds okay, but you’ve gained zero coaching muscle.
Experienced managers know that the performance assessment is just as much about growing management skills as it is growing the skills of your reports.
AI Is a Helper, Not an Abstraction
“But wait—aren’t tools supposed to make us better?” Sometimes. The key difference is reliability. True abstractions (think memory-safe languages, spell-check, or a calculator) behave the same way every time, so you can build skill on top of them.
Management AI isn’t that. If every managerial moment were forever mediated through an AI - 1:1s, presentations, promotions - then perhaps it could serve as a real abstraction. That world is nowhere close. As a result, using AI for critical deliverables is fundamentally restricting your ability to gain managerial skills.
Dos and Don’ts
Some work is meant to hurt - that strain is the rewiring session your brain needs to level up. Letting AI sand off the edges is test-day cheating: great for today’s quiz, fatal for tomorrow’s mastery.
How to use AI for management:
Resume screening - Use AI. Codify your rules and let it sift the pile.
Selling candidates — All you. Closing talent is a core managerial muscle; don’t skip the reps.
Designing process — Use AI (probably). Most workflows are commodities; let AI draft the scaffolding.
Running process - It depends. Automated nudges and compliance checks can use AI. You should not use AI for running meetings like stand-ups or backlog grooming - those teach you how the team breathes and are critical tools for you to manage through.
Performance management — Keep it human. Feedback is a craft; practice it.
Career growth — Use AI as a sparring partner. Let it surface ideas, but you own the plan.
Rule of thumb: use AI on repetitive tasks or where the answer is absolute. If you’re thinking hard in the realm of ambiguity and human behavior, that’s learning how to manage, and you can’t afford to offload it.
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This is the same problem that educators see acutely (and haven't solved). It's even harder in companies, where learning is secondary, but the same principles could apply.
I have found AI to be helpful in some capacity for performance reviews. I try to take notes each week about myself and people I interact with. I included copies of our review questions, our ladders, and my notes and asked AI to categorize things.
It definitely found some things in my notes that I had missed when writing my reviews.