[jevanish]

This is exactly what Wistia found: https://wistia.com/blog/ditching-flat

"We began to realize that by building a company with a flat org structure, we had done the exact opposite of what we had intended. We had centralized all the decision-making, and we were relying on a secret implicit structure to make progress.

Every company has a structure. If you don't explicitly define your structure, then you are left with an implicit one, and that can stifle productivity. We had hoped that being flat would let us move faster and be more creative, but as we grew, we ended up with an unspoken hierarchy that actually slowed down our ability to execute."

[sliverstorm]

Also discovered by feminist organizations in decades past. A good read:

There is no such thing as a structureless group. Any group of people of whatever nature that comes together for any length of time for any purpose will inevitably structure itself in some fashion. --Jo Freeman, "The Tyranny of Structurelessness"

http://www.jofreeman.com/joreen/tyranny.htm

[vintermann]

I was going to recommend that. Whether the accusations of gender discrimination were warranted or not, either way it would be a dead-classic example of power struggles in informal structures.