Comment by throwaway746262
5 days ago
Yes, I take your point.
But if I said "I don't understand the point of brakes. Why do all cars get made with brakes?", then as well as making your point ("look, do you really think you know better than Stellantis!?") there's also a straightforward answer which is "cars need brakes so they can stop instead of killing people."
What's the "straightforward answer" case for the existence of managers? Your answer just suggests that such an answer does exist, without revealing what it is.
Sort of in the same vein as "you don't need to understand gravity to recognize that it's important," you not understanding what the answer is doesn't mean there isn't an answer and that the answer isn't important.
I don't have "the answer" (I have _an_ answer, see below), and I also don't need to know "the answer" in order to understand that the managerial class doesn't exist for shits and giggles. There's value there.
If Bezos thought getting rid of managers at Amazon would make him another half a billion dollars, you bet your ass he'd do it.
My answer? It's exactly what that group of seniorish people would do: make decisions. But the seniorish people can't make decisions all day and ALSO do the things they're senior at. You may not like that answer -- and you don't have to! -- but "making decisions" is something that needs to get done at scale without sacrificing the actual productive work that ICs do.
But again, I think you're asking a great question, and I think there's room to say "Is the current paradigm the best paradigm?" and explore other alternatives.
But the very clear answer from all research in addition to basic intuition is "As far as we know, yes."
Why? Doesn't really matter. We just know that if we didn't have managers, the world as we know it wouldn't exist. (For better or for worse!)