It's not tomato tomato. "Lead Link" is a specificly defined term from a management process theory called holacracy (as mentioned in the original article).

You can read the details of holacracy here: http://holacracy.org/constitution

There are signifigant differences between what a lead link does and a traditional manager. They act more as a spokesperson for the accountabilities and priorities delegated to them by a larger democratic process.

This is yet another example of a flippant and largely content free criticism on hackernews made from a position of ignorance on the topic. I'm ambivalent on whether holacracy is a good system as I have no personal experience with it, but lets at least talk about what the article is actually about rather than just pattern matching whatever random crap is in people's heads.