I work at a product company that works in a very flat way. We accomplish our goals by having a product owner who doesn't actually have any direct authority over

I work at a product company that works in a very flat way. We accomplish our goals by having a product owner who doesn't actually have any direct authority over the technical team. The technical team is managed by a member embedded within who handles HR-style questions and otherwise works like a peer. Technical decisions are made by majority vote. The team handles uninteresting work like documentation, bug fixing, broken builds, and training with full-time promiscuous pair-programming. This means that attitude and maturity are our most important attributes, as technical skill quickly will be taught while doing regular work. Several times in my career we've had to say to someone, "perhaps this isn't a good fit for you, why don't you start looking..." because they hate the exposure and boring work required to build a massive Enterprise system. We almost always fix bugs and broken builds immediately, followed by product work. We spend 25% of our time fixing technical debt (this is typically the least fun work!). Through all this we are able to ship release after release on time, adding in new features and regulatory standards with ease. It's given me hope it _can_ be done, but also that the circumstances to maintain it are almost impossible to force. It requires all the right people in all the right places to change a typical hierarchy into something like this.