[adamtaylor_13]

It really depends on how large the company is. But small, independent teams are exactly how high-stakes teams work (e.g,. special forces groups). But it demands a level of buy-in and commitment that most people simply won't have towards their job. Even so, there's a level of "middle-management" that has to exist when an organization gets to a certain size. Most generals cannot realistically think at the level of an individual firefight, but a fireteam leader absolutely MUST think about success at the firefight level. However, a single fire team cannot win a war, so the generals must exist to consider the 30,000 foot view of success.

It's a difficult, though IMO noble, thing to try to build a workplace that is actually suited for this style of work. But the vision of the company: what are they trying to build, how world-changing is their vision, etc.—those things impact whether or not it's even feasible to get rid of middle-management.

As a final point, I've met many brilliant engineers who are simply not capable of being put in front of a customer. They either didn't care or weren't capable of communicating in the necessary way to correctly move the needle. That doesn't mean we toss them out, it means we put a layer between them: middle management.