Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg became increasingly focused on flattening the company’s hierarchy. He even declared 2023 the “Year of Efficiency.” 2024 was going to be the year for consolidating the new structure by reducing the number of intermediate positions. This model has recently gained popularity, with some companies going so far as to eliminate job titles and even dispense with managers altogether.
During the pandemic, Meta significantly expanded its workforce. In fact, some newly hired employees revealed that their recruitment was primarily aimed at preventing competitors from hiring them instead.
As a result, the company developed a hyper-hierarchical workforce, where decisions had to pass through too many layers before reaching the appropriate decision-maker. This created a situation of inefficiency.
In response, Zuckerberg initiated a round of layoffs targeting middle managers. The goal was to streamline the decision-making process by reducing the layers between problems and solutions. This approach has since been adopted by other major tech companies, such as Amazon and Google. They’re also striving for faster decision-making in the highly competitive environment driven by the advancement of AI.
Horizontal Organization: No Job Titles or Bosses
In their quest for a simpler hierarchy, some companies have chosen to eliminate job titles, democratizing decision-making and organizing themselves by departments (horizontally) rather than by layers (vertically).
ElevenLabs, a company focused on AI development, recently removed job titles for all employees. As a result, no one holds a title like VP, director, and manager. Instead, everyone belongs to a department. Employees can also collaborate openly with other departments as necessary without needing approval from a supervisor or coordinator.
“Job titles can be a distraction. They remove attention from the outcomes of the work–on coming up with the best ideas and executing them quickly–and reduce our ability to change focus flexibly,” Victoria Weller, who works with the operations team at ElevenLabs, said in a Shifted post.
Weller emphasizes that the goal of the organizational change was to encourage the team to ask, “Where do I have the highest impact right now?” rather than “How do I become head of…?” In other words, the focus is on resolving projects rather than on individual ambitions related to promotions.
In a post on X, Luke Harries, another member of the ElevenLabs team, highlighted this unique aspect of the company. He pointed out that no one has grand titles that describe their roles, emphasizing that it’s the ideas that matter, not the position of the person suggesting them.
In his message, Harries included the company’s current job openings, which indeed don’t specify the title of the position being applied for. Instead, they only describe the department (such as engineering, operations, revenue, support, etc.).
Not All Companies Have Succeeded With This Model
The idea of eliminating job titles and bosses doesn’t guarantee success. Historical records show that several companies have been forced to revert to a “traditional” hierarchical structure.
GitHub serves as a notable example. Founded in 2008 with a flat structure, the company initially operated without bosses based on the founders’ convictions. However, by 2016, it had to abandon that model. Similarly, Medium encountered significant challenges in maintaining its “Holacracy” model because it began interfering with productivity.
At Buffer, the leadership admitted they “got [it] wrong” and struggled to effectively implement the self-management model within the company’s internal structure. Additionally, Zappos faced a major setback when it announced to employees that they could either embrace self-management or leave, resulting in a loss of nearly a third of its workforce.
Image | Redd Francisco
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