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I don't think its possible to just take it away and see what happens, because organizations build the concept of EMs into their entire culture. As an example: I worked in a Big Tech org where the only way to get anything from another team was an org hierarchy jump. ICs could reach out directly; ignored. Some teams didn't even have a way to reach out to them. You had to go EM, then maybe a Director, then it filters down, and maybe a day, maybe a week later, you'd get an email introduction. It doesn't have to be like this, no one even decided it should be like this, but because they had the hierarchy that's how the culture evolved. The better comparison is to look at companies who don't have that role, or define that role significantly differently from the traditional Big Tech definition. There are many; of course, not as many as the latter. And just like companies who do have the role traditionally defined, there are success stories and there are failure stories. To me, the more I've read up on those stories, the more I've realized how pointless the role is. Or, maybe more accurately; how much of the role's responsibility is really to be a crutch for bad culture, bad upper management, bad hiring practices, bad interviewing, etc. That ain't totally pointless, but if you're also flipping a coin on the quality of each EM you hire, and moreover the coin is rigged because we don't even have an industry standard definition for what defines success in the EM role in the best cases; there are better ways of reaching the same destination. But, you know, most of the time those better ways require an ounce of Trust from senior leadership, and that's like pulling water from desert sand. |