Picture this morning.
You show up to work. There are no managers. Not "fewer." None.
You knew this was coming (maybe). The CEO sent a memo three weeks ago: we're restructuring. But you didn't think he meant no management layer at all.
He did.
This actually happened. At Block (Jack Dorsey's fintech company), they didn't just cut middle management.
They cut 40% of their workforce, eliminated the entire concept of departments, and reorganized around three roles: individual contributors, platform leads, and functional leads.
No directors. No VPs. No "managers."
What Dorsey Was Actually Trying to Do
Dorsey has said it explicitly: traditional hierarchy is slow. Information moves up, decisions move down, everything gets filtered and diluted.
He wanted to remove the filter entirely.
So at Block, instead of having a structure like:
CEO → VP Engineering → Manager → Engineer
They built:
CEO → Platform Lead → Engineer
One less layer. One less person making decisions about what should go up and what shouldn't.
What Happened (The Good Parts)
Speed. The company moved faster. Engineers didn't wait for approval. Problems got escalated to people who could actually solve them, not to a manager who had to escalate to someone else.
Communication got more direct. You didn't learn about a decision from your manager's email about what the VP said. You learned it from the people actually making it.
More autonomy. Engineers owned their outcomes in a way they didn't before. You're not "executing the manager's vision." You're building something.
What Happened (The Bad Parts)
Chaos. 40% of headcount gone overnight is shocking. People don't know where they fit. Is a platform lead a manager? Are they responsible for me? Unclear.
Some engineers thrived. Others floundered. The ones who needed guidance — more structure, mentorship, clarity on growth — they suffered.
Burnout came fast. "No managers" sounds like freedom. In reality, some people need managers to tell them they're doing okay. Or to push back when they're taking on too much.
Platform leads became de-facto managers without the title or training. They had all the responsibility and none of the tools. So some of them burned out too.
The Real Issue
Dorsey assumed that removing hierarchy would remove the problems hierarchy creates (slow decisions, filtered information, politics).
What actually happened: the problems didn't disappear. They just showed up different.
The fast decision-makers got faster and more powerful. The slow people got more lost.
The ones who were good at "managing up" suddenly had no one to manage up to, so they either had to become direct.
The ones who were good at "managing down" couldn't anymore. So they either left or became something else.
What This Reveals
Hierarchy isn't just bureaucracy. It's also a support structure.
A bad hierarchy is slow. But no hierarchy isn't fast — it's chaotic.
The companies that are winning aren't the ones eliminating hierarchy. They're the ones redesigning it. Flattening it, sure. But not removing it.
One platform lead for five engineers. That person actually knows what's happening, can help when things break, can develop people.
Not five managers for five engineers. That's bloat.
And not one "lead" for 50 engineers who are expected to self-organize completely. That only works if everyone is a senior engineer with deep domain expertise.
What Dorsey Got Right (And Got Wrong)
Right: Hierarchies were too deep and decisions were too slow.
Wrong: The solution is no hierarchy, not "the right hierarchy."
Right: Information should flow up without being filtered.
Wrong: That's actually hard to build, and it requires structure to work, not less structure.
The Takeaway
If you're thinking about flattening your organization, don't model Dorsey's extreme move. Model the companies that actually survived it and thrived.
They didn't eliminate management. They eliminated unnecessary management. And they were clear about who still has responsibility.
This is part of my series on the future of work. In each post I take a specific research finding, prediction, or move — and ask what it means about the organizations we live in.
If you're restructuring your organization, this gets into the real work: The Little Book for New Managers.
Want to read the next one?
Final synthesis coming — what all of this actually means.
Food for thought, Lior
Want more on managing in the AI era?
The Little Book for New Managers has helped 30,000+ managers figure out what actually works.
Get the book ($19) →