A recent example of a different way to do production is Alex Garland, director of Annihilation (and Ex Machina). He spoke about it somewhat at length at Google:

A recent example of a different way to do production is Alex Garland, director of Annihilation (and Ex Machina). He spoke about it somewhat at length at Google: https://youtu.be/w5i7idoijco?t=5m25s https://youtu.be/w5i7idoijco?t=5m25s In my experience all of the major problems I’ve seen at software companies were problems the rank and file employees knew exactly how to solve, but weren’t allowed to. It seems extremely hard for managers to let go of responsibility and let their team take it on. I understand why: it’s the managers neck on the line. But the fact is, in almost every case the manager doesn’t have the domain knowledge necessary to solve their own problems. Almost by definition: managers lead teams directly into the problems the manager can’t solve. It takes real guts to regularly take a chunk of your resources and hand them to an “underling” and yet that’s absolutely what they must do. I’ve also seen a lot of examples of managers requiring employees to “prove themselves”, often meaning they can prove they can think like the manager thinks, before they can be trusted with an allocation of resources. But this is pointless: the manager is already good at what they are good at, and blind to what they are bad at. By definition hedging your own deficiencies must be a leap of faith.