I've seen the IC/manager dichotomy diffuse into my mental model as I've moved through the tech industry. I agree that it seems to be a model that undermines hea

I've seen the IC/manager dichotomy diffuse into my mental model as I've moved through the tech industry. I agree that it seems to be a model that undermines healthy organizations. The attraction to it, in my view, is that it confers the sense that there will be no 'blocking' on decision making: the manager calls the shots. But in a healthy organization, that's not how it works: not only should managers not be calling the shots, but their job should be pushing decisions onto the people they manage. Additionally, the decisions made should be a mixture of consensus and deference to experts within the group on that particular domain. If you fail to get consensus, or you force people to defer to people who are known to be unable to make good judgement calls on a particular area, you're doomed. So, once it all plays out, in a healthy organization, the IC/manager dichotomy seems somewhat counterproductive. I can't say I have a better alternative for larger organizations, but for small teams and startups, I highly advise disbanding it and staying small for as long as possible to avoid it from being forced upon them due to the surrounding culture. I agree with the sentiment that a dynamic, role based method for delegating responsibility seems incredibly attractive. If you haven't seen it before, Turtleocracy is really interesting (not just directly, but at a meta level as a way to design social systems for these problems) https://www.notion.so/Turtleocracy-47a6df7692bf4e95a39504a73a50a295 https://www.notion.so/Turtleocracy-47a6df7692bf4e95a39504a73...