&gt; Undoing hierarchy at every turn is in the zeitgeist.<p>Question for folks: Do you really think this is <i>happening</i> or are people just <i>talking</i> about it? I&#x27;ve worked for people who talked a big collaboration&#x2F;flat structure game, but when it comes down to important projects, all of the sudden, one guy is the decider, and he is only giving responsibility to his lieutenants, who have direct command over the people below. He can count on his hand the number of people who have true control over real resources, which makes it easy for him to reason about where costs are going.<p>Everyone tries to be nice about it, but my sense is that almost no one actually believes in giving serious responsibilities to a wide range of people. They have their go-to people, and everyone else has to prove themselves by following directions well and maybe they can get a position in that structure at some theoretical later date.<p>I haven&#x27;t worked in very many different companies though, so I would love to hear if that&#x27;s actually becoming a bigger thing in other places. I know Valve is different, but they seem more and more like an outlier to me.