HR leaders have a choice about whether to get ahead of this view, or manage the wreckage
Brian Chesky does not deal in euphemism. The Airbnb co-founder and chief executive, speaking on the Invest Like the Best podcast earlier this month, identified two categories of worker he believes will not survive the transition to an AI-enabled workplace: people who refuse to adapt, and people managers whose entire contribution is managing people.
"I do not think people managers will have any value in the future," Chesky said. "When I mean people managers, I mean people that only manage people. You cannot just be these managers where you are people's therapists, and you are just doing meetings, you are doing one-on-ones."
The remark landed hard in part because it named something already being felt. The layer of management that coordinates rather than contributes - that formats information for upward consumption and schedules recurring status meetings - is under pressure in nearly every organisation that has begun deploying AI in earnest. Chesky simply said it would disappear.
The question for New Zealand HR leaders is not whether they agree with him. It is whether they are ahead of the curve or behind it.
What Chesky actually said - and what he did not
The full context matters, because the headline version - "people managers are finished" - is both accurate and incomplete.
Chesky's preferred model is what he calls a "hybrid people manager" or "manager IC" - an individual contributor who also leads people, and whose authority comes from expertise and proximity to the work rather than from the act of managing itself. His example was Jony Ive, the former Apple chief design officer: a leader whose influence derived from deep engagement with the product, not from an org chart position.
He pointed to Airbnb as a live example of the transition. Design and engineering leaders are "going back to coding or using Claude Code," the AI-powered coding assistant from Anthropic. AI now generates nearly 60 per cent of Airbnb's code. The managers thriving, Chesky said, are those in the work - not watching others do it.
He was careful to distinguish between the role becoming less valuable and the person becoming less valuable. His message to individuals: "The companies that are prepared to change and transform are the companies that are going to benefit from AI. And if you do not change, you are going to be disrupted."
A consensus, not an outlier
Chesky's remarks would be easier to dismiss if he were alone. He is not. Jack Dorsey of Block has declared there is "no need for a permanent middle management layer." Coinbase, cutting 14 per cent of its workforce, is simultaneously flattening to five layers below the CEO with every leader required to be a "strong and active contributor." Gartner predicts that by 2026, 20 per cent of organisations will use AI to eliminate more than half of their middle management positions.
For New Zealand, the urgency is sharpened by a specific local data point. HRD New Zealand has reported that only 35 per cent of HR professionals feel ready to work with AI, with 61 per cent reporting little to no AI involvement in HR processes. That readiness gap sits directly underneath the management challenge Chesky is describing: if the people responsible for developing and supporting managers are themselves unprepared for AI, the transition Chesky is demanding cannot happen in any organised way.
A 2025 DDI global leadership survey cited by HRD New Zealand found that 71 per cent of leaders report increased stress - and of those stressed leaders, 40 per cent have considered leaving their roles entirely to protect their wellbeing. That is not a fringe sentiment. It is a statistic that reframes Chesky's provocation. The middle management layer he is dismissing is, in many cases, already exhausted. The combination of post-pandemic restructuring, AI pressure, and the expectation to lead digital transformation without adequate support has produced a management cohort in genuine crisis. Chesky's suggestion that they simply evolve or be replaced papers over the development investment required to make that evolution possible.
The New Zealand context: a governance vacuum in the making
New Zealand's particular challenge is not scepticism about AI - it is pace. HRD New Zealand has reported that 63 per cent of A/NZ organisations believe they cannot afford not to adopt AI, but 40 per cent of SMB respondents felt anxious about it precisely because they had no way to manage unsanctioned AI use spreading through their organisation. That anxiety is a reasonable response to a real governance vacuum - and it maps directly onto the management question Chesky is raising.
A recent HRD New Zealand report found that 68 per cent of employees are using unsanctioned AI tools and 57 per cent are feeding sensitive corporate data into them. The managers who are supposed to be governing that behaviour - approving tools, setting expectations, modelling responsible use - are, in many cases, the least AI-capable people in the team. That inversion is not a cultural accident. It is what happens when organisations roll out AI as a technology programme rather than a people strategy.
HRD's reporting on the 2026 L&D mandate in New Zealand named it directly: "AI upskilling is now essential, but not in the narrow sense of teaching people how to use tools. The real imperative is building AI readiness" - including "helping employees understand how work is changing, including how tasks and responsibilities within traditional roles are being reshaped." That is a description of management development, not just technology training.
What HR must resist
The tech CEO consensus on middle management is consistent and loud. But there is a dimension of this debate that deserves a counter-argument, and New Zealand HR leaders are well placed to make it.
HRD New Zealand has reported that HR now plays a "critical role in coaching and training a new era of leadership," with frontline leaders and middle managers described as the "first point of contact with the majority of the organisation" who can "make or break culture and change efforts". Strip that layer out without replacing the connective function it serves and you do not get a leaner, faster organisation. You get one where strategy and execution have lost their translator.
HRD's reporting on AI governance is clear that human oversight remains non-negotiable in areas where AI touches employment decisions. The managers being questioned by Chesky are often the humans doing that overseeing. Removing them from the equation without building an equivalent governance infrastructure elsewhere is not transformation. It is exposure.
The practical mandate for New Zealand HR: treat Chesky's challenge as a development brief, not a restructuring one. The player-coach model he describes is achievable. But it requires investment in capability, not just a change to reporting lines. As executive coach Jade Green told HRD New Zealand, the leaders most likely to win in 2026 are those "tripling down" strategically - not those who avoided AI, and not those who implemented it too fast without clear purpose. The same framework applies to the managers they are responsible for developing.
The meeting manager is not over. The meeting-only manager is. That distinction is the work.
