Greg Storey, "Minimum Viable Humans." hits like a funnel cloud:

Companies aren't just cutting costs—they're conducting a fundamental reset to find their Minimum Viable Humans model. They're stripping organizations down to the ground—the irreducible human functions that (currently) can't be replaced or augmented by AI.

This rings true to what I've been seeing. The cruelty feels incidental to the process—not to me and everyone I know, mind you—but indignation won't pay my mortgage.

Trying to get your old job back is futile—that role, as you remember it, isn’t coming back. The opportunity now lies in positioning yourself for the roles and capabilities that will emerge as organizations rebuild from the bottom up—core human strengths like creativity and ethical judgment, the ability to collaborate with AI, your unique experience and expertise, and the kind of discernment that values judgment over process.

Brutal, yet maybe positive? If drudgery gets distilled out, what's left are human creativity, judgment, and experience. That sounds nice, like what classic sci-fi promised us.

But you can't mechanize that with a Taylorist time-and-motion study. Some jobs are just paychecks, some spark enthusiasm, and some flip between both unpredictably.

Will companies make allowances for that, while rewarding what they're asking for? I know we're seeing a reckoning right now, a firm snatching back from privileged labor. Fine, I don't need a free lunch or a foosball table, but I do need a health plan and a few days off. What's the churn for all of us while they figure that out?

The manager's role isn't just being eliminated—it's being fundamentally redefined from day-to-day oversight to exception handling, strategic communication, and resource allocation across much larger teams. It will keep going into augmenting the decision-making process for leaders and individual contributors alike. The boundaries of acceptable risk at all levels are now in a constant prototype state as AI becomes more powerful and faster, giving mere mortals more access to information and insight than ever before. The trick will be what training we need in order to make the pairing work.

This might suit an ADHD-head like me. I could see myself as a human relay, occasionally reallocating pylons and vespene gas amongst largely autonomous protoss units. I'm already having better luck than some with AI-assisted coding. Maybe I'm learning the magic invocations? Maybe I'm a special kind of moron? Either way, I'm ending up with working code and nodding heads. This gives me some hope that I can "stay current" - whatever that means in the current era.

Admittedly, I'm more comfortable directing Starcraft units and AI agents like this. That feels like a kind of management to me. I'm not so comfortable directing human co-workers with the same interface, though.

This isn't just another tech cycle. It's a fundamental recalibration of the human role in organizational life. And while there's no easy path through this transition, understanding what's actually happening might help you find your footing on shifting ground.

I keep slipping into snark because part of me finds this exciting while another part is cynical and burnt out. I'm hoping optimism holds out longer than cynicism. Maybe the thumbless neurotic puma driving a maroon AMC Gremlin have the last laugh after all? (Anybody get that reference anymore?) I dunno, I'm just trying to figure how much of this is like that surface rupture in Myanmar last week and whether my Crocs can carry me to the right side of it.