Coinbase has flattened to five layers and started talking about one-person teams. (A bold reinvention of the thing we used to call a job.) The logic is clean. Fewer managers, faster decisions, lower cost. Which on a spreadsheet looks like progress.
The spreadsheet leaves a lot out.
Where judgement got transferred
The middle layer was never just a reporting line. It was where judgement got transferred. Where a first-time manager learned to have a hard conversation without setting fire to the room. Where someone translated what the executive actually meant into what the team should actually do. Where potential got coached into capability, over years, by people who had the time to notice.
Cut that layer and the cost does not disappear. It turns up two years later as a leadership pipeline that has run dry, a generation that never learned to make the tough calls, and a set of high performers promoted into a gap nobody prepared them for.
It might be a design problem
Only 6% of younger workers now say reaching leadership is their main goal. We keep filing that under motivation problem. It might be a design problem. We removed the people who made leadership look worth doing, then act surprised that fewer people want the job.
You can flatten an organisation. You cannot flatten the way people actually learn to lead.