[Dansvidania]

that is definitely something I have felt in the past (as an engineer having to deal with parasitic managers)

I have since found that like there are good and bad engineers, you can have good and bad managers.

I now find myself thinking about management as if it were the command chain in an army, and I would be hard pressed to imagine how an army composed of a general and thousands of privates, with no layers in between, would ever be able to accomplish anything.

[coffeemug]

You don't abolish the chain of command. You abolish management as a separate organization with its own incentives. For example, Linus is a leader but he is not a manager. In engineering this is what you want.

[asdfasgasdgasdg]

The only way it changes is if someone gains enough power to make the change. And almost by construction engineers do not have that power. So it would take an exceptionally self-less manager. I Or else an engineer who agrees who by luck or skill gains extraordinary power, implements this new power structure, and achieves such astonishing success with it that firm owners have no choice but to take notice and demand similar reforms at their firms. Or some third way I'm not seeing.

A.k.a. nothing like what the blog envisions is likely to happen.

[waterhouse]

How about if an engineer founds a startup and dictates that this is how it'll be done there, and the startup ends up succeeding? That would fit your second scenario: "an engineer who agrees who by luck or skill gains extraordinary power, implements this new power structure". I think we have seen cases of engineer founders who were in a position to do that kind of thing.

The blog post links to a story about Larry Page "firing" all the project managers; while they didn't exit the company, they were moved to another organization, and it seems Page got his wish of "no managers" in his organization for some time, until there were problems and complaints and "eventually" they started hiring more managers. If he had a fully workable approach in mind, it seems he could have implemented it for long enough to demonstrate its success.

[asdfasgasdgasdg]

> How about if an engineer founds a startup and dictates that this is how it'll be done there, and the startup ends up succeeding? That would fit your second scenario: "an engineer who agrees who by luck or skill gains extraordinary power, implements this new power structure".

Yes, arguably this is how we got to the current state of affairs, particularly thanks to Larry and Sergey, and the cross pollination and following-on of their approach. What I question is the likelihood of someone with this viewpoint reaching that level of power.

[epicureanideal]

Assuming the structure produces better products and better incentivizes the team, it should have a competitive advantage. Build a startup based on similar management principles. If multiple startups attempt it, a few may succeed and serve as an example to follow.

[coffeemug]

That would imply that the balance of power never shifts, which clearly isn't true over the long term.