The Myth
Imagine running a transport company in the pre-Uber era. You have a fleet of cars and drivers. When a customer calls, you quickly find the nearest available driver, make the booking, and keep both sides happy. This was a flourishing business a few decades ago. Even now, there are companies that run this business, especially in smaller towns.
Think about the job of the manager here. The job of the manager was exhausting as it required a lot of customer driver coordination as well as managing their emotions under pressure.
It was the most crucial job because the manager was supposed to logically allocate the cabs to the customers to optimize the top line of the business. No one thought that this job could be obsolete. That was the myth.
The Job of the Manager
Uber changed the game. It applied rules for allocation of cabs. It wrote algorithms for dynamic pricing. It enforced standards of quality. Customers and Drivers accepted those rules and standards as they found the value proposition beneficial. It appeared that the overhead cost of the manager was getting split between the customers and the drivers.
The most critical job of the entire business evaporated just like that. That’s how vulnerable jobs are in the age of Artificial Intelligence. Interestingly, it is not only Uber. Most of the new generation companies like AirBnB, OYO, OLA, Swiggy, Urban Clap are doing the same thing.
They are eliminating managers from the process of scheduling. Unilever also shifted managers toward exception-handling while digital twins handled routine coordination.
By 2026, Gartner projects that 20% of organizations will eliminate more than half of their middle‑management roles using AI bladelessly flattening structures and automating scheduling and performance tracking.
Is AI Responsible?
You can blame AI for it because that is the safest option. AI has been around for almost 75 years. It showed the capability to handle such transactions on scale. Someone realized that this capability can be used to optimize processes, improve experience and make money. That gave birth to new age organizations like Uber.
Uber made sense because customers faced issues of long waiting times, cab availability, coordination and unreasonable pricing. On the driver side there were issues of long waiting times, exploitation, work life balance, coordination and inconsistent treatment. If you see the irony of this, the most critical job of the business was responsible for all the dissatisfaction.
Uber solved problems of customers and drivers by giving them direct access to each other. Now they were not dependent on anyone. They may choose as per their free will. They had more choices. The rules and pricing were transparent. The customers as well as drivers enjoyed the benefits of the AI platform. When the discussion of the manager’s job loss came, it was blamed on AI because it was convenient.
Was the Job Really Eliminated?
It appears that the job of the manager got eliminated and the overhead cost was shared between the customer and the driver. However, that charm did not last for long. The overhead came back in the form of the platform fee.
Uber realized that it has to work on the optimization of its algorithms continuously. Also, it will have to manage the emotions of its drivers. These were the two jobs being performed by the manager. The first job went to programmers. The second job went to the virtual HR guys who listen to grievances of drivers and encourage them to do more. The cost of these two jobs plus profit became the platform fee.
The Bright Side
The job of the manager shape shifted into new jobs of programmers and virtual HR. However the number of the new jobs are much lesser than the original number of jobs available for managers. Still there is a bright side.
The volume of the trips through cabs has gone up significantly. There are more customers taking cabs. There are more people driving cabs. The number of Uber drivers went up from 1,60,000 in 2015 to 8.3 million in 2025 globally i.e. 50x growth in a decade. That has increased the number of driving (skill based) jobs significantly. That is why skills are going to be more important in the new age economy.
Bottom Line
Even AI does not know itself whether it will make the job of managers obsolete or more human. It depends on us. Are we able to see opportunities which are going to make things more efficient? If yes, there will be a business model which will disrupt the job of a traditional manager and create more skill based jobs. If you have a learning mindset, you are honing your skills and adding value, you are going to be fine.
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