Who checks on if you’ve completed your assigned work. This can only be possible in an academic/non profit environment where there are no deadlines or fixed client commitments.
In a functioning workplace, everyone agrees to do their work because it is part of the social contract of working on a team. They don’t need to be told what to do. If someone is falling behind, they’ll talk to other team members and work together to get back on track. You are there to help your coworkers, and they are there to help you. Someone doesn’t have to be your manager to make sure projects run smoothly; everyone can take turns in this role if they feel like it’s something they’re interested in doing and are competent in that role.
It’s only through the distorted lens of corporate ladder climbing and backstabbing departmental politics that the idea arises that you’ll just hire untrustworthy people and then beat them into submission by making a workplace into a prison.
What you described smells like communism - might work on small scale in some isolated cases, but usually doesn’t.
This is assuming a lot. Whose responsibility is it to get to a "functional workplace" and whose responsibility is it to fix it if it's not functional?
And assuming that there is a "social contract" that everyone that's in the workplace buys into is also assuming a lot.
Just because they have been given some set of rights and social power.
Weve seen how they organize and adapt are what classifies the innaye "good"
Hire some recent grads and then make that statement. Not all require checking in on, but often entry-level, junior folks do. Don’t ignore them and don’t hold it against them. You, I’m sure, had someone checking in on you when you first started. Not in a “Are you at your desk” way but a “Are you able to complete the tasks? If not, how can I help you?”
Sadly the last few years with remote work and layoffs have made it so companies get rid of those who are “just doing the job” and keeping those that are “always the job”. Brutal.
One is interfacing the work of a group of people with the needs and wants of others.
Another is doing administrative things like who has done this compliance course or who needs a security authorization.
A third is allocating credit and blame to group members (aka compensation).
A fourth is ensuring that the work product itself is on track (aka technical leadership).
A fifth is ensuring that schedule commitments to other stakeholders are honored.
If you take out the third dimension (credit and blame), then even if a single person happens to do the other 4, they probably won’t feel much like what you’d call a “manager” today.
This is a long-winded way of saying that the various things a manager does can be disaggregated and either spread around the team, eliminated or given to a different person.