TLDR: Asha Sharma, Microsoft’s Corporate Vice President for AI Platform, suggests that artificial intelligence agents are poised to make many traditional management roles obsolete. Speaking on Lenny’s Podcast, Sharma outlined a future where ‘work charts’ driven by AI will replace hierarchical ‘org charts,’ automating task allocation and increasing efficiency within organizations. This vision aligns with broader trends of restructuring and job re-evaluation across the tech industry as companies integrate AI more deeply into their operations.
Asha Sharma, Corporate Vice President for Microsoft’s AI Platform, has put forth a compelling vision for the future of organizational structures, predicting that artificial intelligence could soon render many traditional management positions obsolete. Her insights, shared during a recent appearance on Lenny’s Podcast, highlight a significant shift in how work will be managed and executed within companies.
Sharma argues that as AI becomes deeply embedded in workflows, the conventional ‘org chart’ – a rigid hierarchy of reporting lines – will give way to a more dynamic ‘work chart.’ This new model will see AI agents automatically routing tasks to the most suitable human-AI combination, prioritizing throughput and task completion over traditional upward communication and hierarchical structures. ‘At the end of the day, when you have a set of capable agents and people are capable of more things, you’re not going to start to think in hierarchy and communicating upward. You’re going to start to figure out outward, task-based type of opportunities,’ Sharma explained. She further elaborated, ‘The org chart starts to become the work chart. Tasks and throughput become more important than they have been before.’
This transformation, according to Sharma, will compel companies to address new challenges in task allocation, such as how to automatically decide where to route a new issue or task, who is working on it, and how to monitor and fine-tune AI agent performance. The implications extend beyond corporate deployment, with Sharma suggesting that employees might soon bring their own ‘personal agent stacks’ into the workplace, much like they bring personal devices today, gaining access to previously unavailable skills. Even traditional meetings, she noted, could be ‘weird, but I think they will be a bit better’ with AI agent involvement.
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Sharma’s comments come amidst a broader trend of restructuring within the tech industry, where companies like Google and Microsoft are re-evaluating their management layers. Google, for instance, has reportedly cut 35 percent of its small-team managers, while Microsoft has been trimming staff and restructuring teams, partly to increase managers’ ‘span of control’ by widening the number of direct reports and removing unnecessary layers. Microsoft’s strategic shift includes slowing hiring in non-critical areas and reallocating resources towards cloud infrastructure and generative AI products, underscoring the company’s commitment to an AI-first future.
