[ericalexander0]

The book Trillion Dollar Coach ( written by Eric Schmidt and other ex-Google leadership) has a first hand account of how they went from a philosophy of few managers to more. Surprisingly the debate was settled by impromptu interviews with ICs who said they wanted more managers to help make decisions.

Managers can bring value from multiple aspects, one being faster decision making by shifting away from decisions through consensus. What Amazon calls disagree and commit.

If you go back even further, the no manager philosophy traces to Steve Jobs and his "It's better to be a pirate than in the Navy" quote. With the idea that pirates self organize and are a stronger team. Works great in a skunkworks department, where Jobs personally selected pirates. Falls apart at scale.