For years, I managed multi-unit operations. Sometimes I made the right decisions; sometimes I was wrong. But in both cases, the questions swirling in my mind never stopped. Over the past two months, I’ve read several books and articles on these topics, and they all take different paths but lead to the same conclusion: One day, the CEO will become obsolete.
John Danaher puts it bluntly: in the face of the billions of parameters processed by an algorithm, a CEO’s strategic intuition is a worthless illusion. Varoufakis goes even further: capitalism is dead; it has been replaced by techno-feudalism, and managers are merely temporary stewards of this system. Vitalik Buterin, on the other hand, is completely redefining the company: it’s not a building, not people, not a vision—it’s the totality of smart contracts running on the blockchain.
Code is absolute. There is no negotiation. There is no initiative.
As I read, three voices clashed inside me.
The first voice agrees.
While managing multi-unit operations in Turkey, I reviewed the profit-and-loss statements and reports, and attended meetings. And I observed that the vast majority of managers do not actually look at the data; they merely pretend to interpret it. Algorithms are truly faster, more impartial, and more consistent. What’s called “managerial intuition” is half habit and half bias.
Perhaps this scenario is inevitable.
The second voice disagrees.
Those who say “code is absolute” have forgotten the human who writes the code. Buterin’s manifesto is still an experiment—not a model that works in the real world. Danaher’s algocracy looks clean in the lab, but not in the chaotic reality humans inhabit.
A leaderless company is a nice idea. But when a customer complains, when a supplier fails to deliver, when team morale plummets—which algorithm will kick in at that moment?
Yes, perhaps one day an algorithm will provide an answer to that as well. But who will write that algorithm, train it with what values, and allow it to ask which questions?
The problem isn’t the algorithm’s capacity. The problem is who shapes that capacity.
The third voice, however, asks this:
There’s one thing I’ve learned from 25 years of operations management: the most critical decisions aren’t made within the data, but where the data remains silent. For which customer will you bend the rules? Which employee will you give another chance? Behind which number lies a real problem?
Algorithms optimize. Humans make sense of it.
These two are not the same thing.
Varoufakis is right: the architects of the system are the ones who win. Bostrom is right: humans will lag behind machines in decision-making speed. Aloisi is right: digital Taylorism is real and ruthless.
But let me also say this: all these predictions tell the manager what they shouldn’t do. So who tells them what they should do?
I believe the answer is this: neither surrendering to the algorithm nor rejecting it is the right approach. The right approach is to be a leader who understands the algorithm but isn’t reduced to it.
Building a system architecture—yes. But knowing where humans stand within that architecture is also leadership.
Code isn’t absolute. Who writes the code is absolute.
What do you think?
Sources: John Danaher – Algocracy; Yanis Varoufakis – Technofeudalism; Vitalik Buterin – DAO articles; Antonio Aloisi & Valerio De Stefano – Your Boss Is an Algorithm; Nick Bostrom – Superintelligence