[a_c]

Software engineering is the blend of software, business and people. When the business is itself purely about software, and the sole team member is yourself, then I agree with the article.

The ultimate currency in software engineering is time. Time spent on ideation, time spent on requirement gathering, time spent on designing, time spent on communicating ideas, time spent on iterating features, time spent on maintaining existing codes.

If going through the hierarchy saves you time, by all means do it.