Replacing Middle Management with APIs
I'm not dismissing this line of thought, but realize this probably already exists, and has existed for 100+ years.When I graduated college I started out as a mechanical engineer, sometimes going down to the factory to work on new design issues. There was a constant source of friction between the 22 year old mechanical engineers and the 50+ year old factory workers. Here are a bunch of skilled guys that have been building the product for 30+ years, and they in essence often have to report to kids half their age right out of college that don't know a thing. There was a pathway up through the factory, but there was no pathway across to engineering without getting a degree.If you were a smart engineer, you realized that these guys had an enormous amount of knowledge - more than you could ever hope to get out of a simple degree - and that they were worth listening to. If you were a cocky, dumb, engineer you ignored their opinion.The solution in the past to this problem has been unions. The startups are moving a bit too fast for the unions to catch up, but in all of these recent 'What happens when everything is Uber?' posts written by engineers the role of unions, politicians, and large masses of affected people seem to be ignored.