In defense of the dudeperson, 7 years and 200 people is precisely when toe-dipping into a maturing/stratified/annoyingly process centric IT org probably should begin. It is really annoying to ICs, but the stuff exists for a reason, in every substantial company, for the last 50+ years.

If you're looking for a revolutionary approach, this article does not describe it. It is very very very unlikely any article titled "I am VP of XXX" will describe anything highly divergent from the general managerial consensus on how to run things.

A hierarchy and "salaried emmployees" (which a 7 year / 200 person company will now start to have because there is no tangible ownership % available) are going to involve the usual monetary-extraction / exploitation model of companies: employees take salary and some (actually:none) security and forgo any real economic incentive/reward if they deliver truly valuable/transformative work.

If an employee makes a company a billion dollars, he gets a plaque. If an executive does it, they demand stock options and other "rewards".

Thus, employees cease to care about the company. The next step is the creation of middle management, which ALSO have no aligned incentives except the more abstract "one day will be an exeuctive" but have no real production / creation to point to.

But, orgs and execs know that this hierarchy can be somewhat controlled with "bureaucracy and ceremony" and with sufficient scale, rent seeking, and regulatory capture, will produce an effective profit extraction system.