This reads as one of the many engineering marvel stories (e.g. Bell Labs, Xerox) where revolutionary technology is created by a combination of (a) clever engineers with enough "free" time, and (b) no clueless managers around.
You can read in Kernighans History of Unix that really good managers - "enlightened management" IIRC - were involved and not just involved, some of them were absolutely crucial or Unix won't have existed. It's not like you can just let loose a couple of big brains and things will work out fine. They won't (and didn't).
I don't disagree. Of course you've got to set some direction to big brains but -- we're talking about two different species that coincidentally share the "manager" title here.