Management is just a way to coast. I don't understand why we need to "manage" grown up adults. What we need are team leads who code and architect. Then give them the autonomy to run teams.
Running teams is management. Not everyone wants to be doing the roles involved in managing teams, so it's a designated job title. If you get rid of the hierarchy entirely, then what happens is that they form implicitly and everyone is completely confused as to who leads what, and that only gets worse as teams grow and the number of projects grow.
Some management is bullshit, but literally "run teams" is the important part. But if you get big enough, you do wind up with departments. It grows like a fractal.
Managers are an organisational necessity past a certain scale. If you have not felt the need for them I can only guess you've not been in a company big enough.
Think of it as trying to run a big country with direct democracy. Can it be done? Maybe. But there are good reasons why democracies become indirect after a certain scale.
"Managers are an organisational necessity past a certain scale." That sounds like a dubious claim, I'm sure there are exotic ways to run an organisation that doesn't need managers.
For example, Pirate ships ran with a Battle Commander, Accountant and Crew.
Pirate ships frequently had crews of about 50, and the biggest ones never exceed a couple of hundred. Do you have real world examples of large organisations (in the thousands of employees) being managed in a flat hierarchy? Because I don't.
Please note I'm not saying you can't be overprovisioned in managers. I'm replying to the parent comment that sees no need for managers.
Resolving interpersonal disputes and guessing how much you have to pay someone to get them to stay, and software architecture, are two (three?) totally unrelated skillsets.
You don't need to "guess" how much to pay someone. The market dictates that. HR has pay bands. Raises are always in a narrow band. I don't know what kind of disputes you're talking about.
If you ask any manager - describe your responsibilities succinctly, they will most inevitably fail to do so.
I can imagine a company that had pay bands so narrow and bonuses so small that managers had no tools to reward high performers, and although I agree that it would take away a lot of what allows managers to do their jobs, I don't think that is the usual situation.
Some management is bullshit, but literally "run teams" is the important part. But if you get big enough, you do wind up with departments. It grows like a fractal.