[kmoser]

Top programming talent may still need to be managed (and in fact may need to be managed more than lower quality talent). The sweet spot is to hire top programming talent who is also good at intra-team communication and can organize themselves with little direction from management except to be informed about outside factors like client priorities.

Even better is top talent who can also interface directly with the client when necessary (not necessarily all the time) and doesn't need everything first filtered through a manager.

I've worked with teams like this in the past and it was always a pleasure. Most of them were fairly experienced devs and knew the value of email, phone calls, and water cooler talk (serendipitous discussions which led to valuable information being exchanged). Despite the lack of "modern" productivity tools like text messages, chat apps, and Slack, we were able to get stuff done efficiently.

We had weekly meetings which were productive and useful, and actually helped identify if anything was falling through the cracks. Nobody got bored because the meetings were actually helpful.