Recoiling from Flipkart's complex leveling system (which spawned an "SD 2.5" role), PhonePe's CTO implemented a flat hierarchy with minimal titles. This structure aims to focus engineers on impact and capability growth, rather than chasing promotions and labels.
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Companies mistakenly bundle management with authority, forcing top performers onto a management track to gain influence. Separate them. Define management's role as coordination and context-sharing, allowing senior individual contributors to drive decisions without managing people.
Block's CTO reveals a counterintuitive lesson: reorganizing from a GM-based structure to a functional one (where all engineers report to one org) was the key to their AI transformation. This structural change had a greater productivity impact than any specific AI tool they implemented.
Most startups focus on product or technology innovation, but Gamma's CEO argues that innovating on organizational design is an equally powerful lever. This means rethinking hiring, management, and team composition to create a competitive advantage.
The V0 team operates with minimal product management oversight, empowering product-minded engineers (often ex-founders) to make 95% of product decisions directly. This sacrifices potentially "perfect" choices for a dramatic increase in development velocity.
Gamma maintains a flat, high-impact organization by eschewing traditional managers. Instead, all leaders are "player-coaches"—they actively contribute as individual contributors while also mentoring their teams. This keeps leadership close to the work and empowers teams to adapt quickly without top-down commands.
At Crisp.ai, the core value is that the best argument always wins, regardless of who it comes from—a new junior employee or the company founder. This approach flattens hierarchy and ensures that the best ideas, which often originate from those closest to the product and customers (engineers, PMs), are prioritized.
To maintain a flat, hands-on engineering culture without dedicated managers, Fal replaces traditional one-on-ones. They feel 1-on-1s can force negativity and instead use small group discussions with mixed tenure and roles. This format fosters more constructive, solution-oriented conversations rather than simple complaint sessions.
Instead of traditional managers, Gamma hires "player-coaches"—leaders who actively contribute to the work, like shipping code, while also mentoring their team. This model maintains a flat structure, keeps leadership grounded, and works best in a lean organization.
Gamma scaled to a $2B valuation with only 50 people by innovating on org design, not just product. They prioritize hiring generalists over specialists and use a 'player-coach' model instead of a traditional management layer. This keeps the team lean, agile, and close to the actual work.
