AI Replaces the Boss, Not the Worker

What's happening

Block, the payments company founded by Jack Dorsey, cut 4,000 employees in February, roughly 40% of its workforce. Most were middle managers. In their place, AI systems now coordinate projects, assign tasks, and track progress. The company retained three roles: individual contributors, "directly responsible individuals" rotating on 90-day cycles, and player-coaches. Block is not alone. Meta has pushed its employee-to-manager ratio to 50-to-1, double previous norms. Gallup data shows the average American manager now oversees 12 direct reports, nearly twice the figure from 2013. Gartner projects that one in five companies will use AI to flatten organizational structures by the end of 2026, eliminating more than half of middle management positions. The results are mixed. Global employee engagement sits at 21%, near a 15-year low. One in three HR leaders report that AI restructuring has stripped critical institutional knowledge from their organizations.

What the text says

When Moses tried to govern Israel alone, his father-in-law Jethro intervened with a blunt assessment:

\Exodus 18:17-2317Moses' father-in-law said to him, "The thing that you do is not good.18You will surely wear away, both you, and this people that is with you; for the thing is too heavy for you. You are not able to perform it yourself alone.19Listen now to my voice. I will give you counsel, and God be with you. You represent the people before God, and bring the causes to God.20You shall teach them the statutes and the laws, and shall show them the way in which they must walk, and the work that they must do.21Moreover you shall provide out of all the people able men, such as fear God: men of truth, hating unjust gain; and place such over them, to be rulers of thousands, rulers of hundreds, rulers of fifties, and rulers of tens.22Let them judge the people at all times. It shall be that every great matter they shall bring to you, but every small matter they shall judge themselves. So shall it be easier for you, and they shall share the load with you.23If you will do this thing, and God commands you so, then you will be able to endure, and all of these people also will go to their place in peace."

Jethro's design was layered leadership: rulers of thousands, hundreds, fifties, and tens. The structure was not bureaucracy for its own sake. It existed because human attention has limits. Moses could not know every dispute. No single person could. The system distributed judgment across people who were close enough to see the details.

The passage reveals something often overlooked. Jethro did not tell Moses to work harder or delegate to a system. He told him to find able people and place them near the problems. The architecture of thousands, hundreds, fifties, and tens was built on proximity. Each leader was close enough to the people they served to understand what was actually happening.

AI can aggregate data, flag anomalies, and route decisions. What it cannot do is what Jethro's leaders did: sit with a family in conflict and read the silence between their words. The oldest management consulting advice on record prescribed more human leaders, not fewer.

The reflection

Efficiency is a real virtue. Bloated hierarchies can suffocate initiative, and many middle managers were already overwhelmed, caught between directives from above and frustration from below. The instinct to streamline is not wrong.

But Jethro's counsel points to a stubborn truth: people need to be known by someone with authority to act on their behalf. Proverbs puts it plainly: "Know well the condition of your flocks."

\Proverbs 27:23Know well the state of your flocks, and pay attention to your herds:

An algorithm can monitor a flock. Whether it can know one is a question worth sitting with.