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Comment by bradleyjg | Hacker News Reader

EMs are engineers even if you don’t respect them because they don’t write code anymore. This is different than old school tech companies where managers were businessmen and engineers were thought of similarly to assembly line workers.

The Dilbert dream of no hierarchy (vice a hierarchy made up of engineers) has never worked beyond small companies.

A truly flat org is communism of corporate cultures—-great on paper, a disaster in practice. The dysfunction at these places isn’t because they haven’t flat org’ed hard enough or because of evil, devious middle management subverting the purity of the system—-it’s because the idea is bad in the first place.

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Let's not turn this into an exercise in moving goalposts and constructing strawmen, OK? I never expressed any disrespect of EMs, nor did I propose a flat organizational structure. You specifically mentioned going up to Vice President of Engineering level, which is quite different than a line EM, and I responded to that. Your absurd invocation of communism aside, that's way over on the old-fashioned authoritarian/hierarchical end of the organizational spectrum.

That’s where some decisions should be made. For example, creating a new programming language. The answer is almost always “no, that’s a horrible idea” the determination otherwise should be made by the person ultimately responsible for all engineer execution.

> That’s where some decisions should be made.

Some, yes. Look at those goalposts go! Staff engineers are hired to bring skills and knowledge and perspective not already present. All I'm saying is that they should be able to exercise those assets, and all too often that is discouraged. I'm beginning to wonder if your accusation about disrespecting EMs is just projection of your own disrespect for higher-level ICs.

From my original reply: “They have influence in shaping it, but they aren’t hired or promoted to buck it.”

I’m not sure we disagree that much, maybe over where to draw the line, or maybe over how we talk about roughly the same outcomes. I’m content to leave the discussion here. Cheers.

If a flat org is communism, what is a top-down org? A dictatorship or authoritarianism?

A top-down org where employees don't have the power to vote out management is exactly that - an authoritarian structure. That's why is called privately owned.

I don’t say it is communism rather it’s like communism in that both look good on paper and are disastrous in practice.

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