CONCEPT
The Taskmaster
Workers who supervise workers who do not require supervision — assigning tasks to people who already know what needs to be done, generating coordination requirements to justify the position of coordinator.
Taskmasters manage. Graeber distinguished two subspecies: those whose function is purely supervisory (without contributing to what is being supervised) and those who actively generate work for subordinates in order to justify their managerial position. Both species multiply in the bureaucratic apparatuses of contemporary corporations. The middle manager whose primary activity is producing reports about the work of subordinates who already know what they are doing. The project manager who creates coordination requirements that the coordination addresses. The director whose authority is measured by the size of the team beneath them. AI threatens taskmaster work directly: when individuals can direct AI tools to accomplish complex tasks autonomously, the raison d'être of the supervisor dissolves. But taskmasters do not dissolve voluntarily. They reinvent themselves as supervisors of AI use, auditors of AI output, governors of AI workflow.
In The You On AI Field Guide
The taskmaster is the central figure in managerial feudalism — the modern equivalent of the medieval steward whose authority derived from the