Alejandro Arce — home Thinking in Public
No. 136 · Work

I'm a bot manager

Line illustration: a neat row of small boxy robots with round heads standing on a workbench, a clipboard with a blank sheet leaning against the first one; the clipboard is the terracotta accent.

I'm not a marketing consultant. I'm a bot manager.

I build and manage the bots for all of it.

What a bot manager does

A bot manager builds the bots, gives them tasks and checks their work. Microsoft's 2025 Work Trend Index gave the role a name, the "agent boss": someone who builds, delegates to and manages agents. In that survey of leaders, 28% of managers said they were considering hiring AI workforce managers within 12 to 18 months, and 36% of leaders expected managing agents to be part of their work within five years. The report surveyed about 31,000 workers in 31 markets.

Start with one task

Pick a task you repeat every week, like the Friday status update. Write down each step. Build a bot, or ask an AI to build one, that does the first draft. Check the draft, fix it, and run it again next week. A manager reviews the work, and a bot needs the same: read its output, compare it with what you would have written, and write down each fix so the next version gets better. More on this in You'll be measured by the agents you manage.

If you work at a large corporation and you're not allowed to change your systems, bro, change them. What's stopping you from automating your workflows and doing more?

Get in front of the action. Don't wait for it to be done to you.

The AI Audit maps every task in your business that AI can do faster, cheaper or better.

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