I replaced my manager with AI.
Not because my manager was bad, but because I needed someone who could be brutally honest without worrying about my feelings or the working relationship.
Every week I run a retrospective with AI. What shipped, what stalled, where time actually went versus where I thought it went. The AI doesn't soften feedback or avoid uncomfortable questions. It just tells me: 'This was low-leverage. This was reactive. Here's what actually moved things forward.'
That kind of honest audit changed how I prioritise and manage my own work, faster than any human manager could have, because humans have to preserve relationships. AI doesn't.
The irony isn't lost on me. We spent years talking about AI replacing developers. Turns out some management work, the pattern recognition, the prioritisation feedback and the uncomfortable questions, turned out to be more replaceable than the code.
The real efficiency gain wasn’t replacing a person. It was removing the distance between the idea and the outcome.