I was talking about the programming profession. Their work is (was?) in establishing those details. The programming jobs as they were are going away, and are becoming more like management. I think we both agree there. What I don't agree with is saying that programming was always management. That, to me, is over-generalising what management is to the point where the word is becoming almost meaningless.
> What I don't agree with is saying that programming was always management.
I doubt anyone would, and that is why we even talked about the time when programmers weren't managers. Again, there really was a time in early computing where humans mechanically transcribed human-level descriptions into machine code. This is the origin of the term "coder". That was the job — encoding one representation into another. Unless you are trying to draw a distinction between programmers and coders? Most seem to consider them to be one and the same. But it wasn't long before we figured out how to make the computer the coder, so humans only had to worry about management of the coders.
> That, to me, is over-generalising what management is
The key difference in traditional use is that management is expected to manage people. As I mentioned before, I'd totally buy into you holding that same position. Except the idea of "everyone will be managers" hinges on the idea that they will manage computers, same as programmers have already been doing for decades. So that position doesn't work here. You cannot maintain that management is only management if it is people being managed, but then accept that in the future we will all be managers...
Straight up, there is no future where everyone will be managers of people. If everyone is the manager, what people would there be left to manage? It is impossible. Everyone becoming the manager is only possible if you include other things like computers. Which is fine, but we already manage computers. There is nothing new on that front. Computers were built to be managed. They are useless otherwise. Programming, for instance, is already always management (where you include computers as something able to be managed), even if there was a brief moment in time where it was more than that.
People management was always only a branch of management. However, never would I say that when coding, I'm "managing the computer". It's a weird thing to me. A compiler is a tool, not an unpredictable process I need to manage. I never used that lens in my professional work until LLMs. I'm talking 3 years ago, not 30.
I get that it's cute and philosophical to think everything is management and I'm one to generalize stuff as well ad-nausea. But when people don't find satisfaction in their work anymore and the excuse is "well, think of it as a promotion", that to me is taking the analogy too far because it suits the current trends.
But we're discussing now what it means to do management. We'll just have to agree to disagree and call it a day
> People management was always only a branch of management.
What other branch is there? You are either delegating or doing all the work yourself. Those who delegate become seen as managers, as that delegation requires managing the people (or, possibly things, depending on how you see that) that the work was delegated to. Those who receive the delegation and carry out their task individually are those considered to not be managers, but rather individual contributors.
> However, never would I say that when coding, I'm "managing the computer".
Why would you say anything while coding? I guess if you had some kind of voice-to-text system you might say something, but it wouldn't be "whee, I'm a manager now!!!!" — it'd be specific instructions directed at the computer so that it knows what task you are delegating to it.
> A compiler is a tool, not an unpredictable process I need to manage.
A compiler can be predictable if you perfectly describe the task you want it to carry out. However, that rarely happens in practice. Communicating your intent is always the hard part.
Which isn't much different than people. There are exceptions, but generally if you clearly define what you want them to do, they will execute it perfectly. Management of humans is all about coming back to make sure that what you described was correct and made sense to the receiving party. Which is the same thing you have to do with compilers.