Good managers shield their reports from a lot of the crap that is inevitable at scale in a large organization. A large company can't just have individuals and small self-managed teams go off and do whatever they feel like. And, yes, if you just cut out all the intermediate layers, the VP with 150 direct reports will simply have to resort to automation based on simplistic metrics. "You didn't produce enough lines of code last week. If that happens again, you will be placed on a performance plan and then terminated if the situation doesn't improve in 2 months."
Literally all of those layers including the VP could be replaced right now.
All those jobs do is push emails rewording other emails to other people pushing email.
I feel like eventually every company will have a single a figurehead that’s fed instructions but believes it’s original thought and is told by the AI what a great idea they just had all day long.
I think its simply because upper management doesn't trust the people they've hired.
In my mind, having individuals and small self managed teams go off and do whatever they feel drawn to do is exactly how a good company is run. - So long as those teams and individuals talk to (& seek advice) from the rest of the company when their work has impacts outside the team. The book Reinventing Organizations by Laloux talks about this a lot, and how it works in some companies today.
The reason it doesn't happen more is that upper management doesn't trust their employees and they don't feel in control when people just do things.
