If a company says that they have no hierarchical structure or they have a flat hierarchy consider that as a definite red flag.

What they basically mean is that Noone is responsible for anything and everyone is going to be passive aggressive towards you if you have any skill at all in fear of losing their *position* in others mind.

There is no growth in such a company.

Dude, you might be into something here. It kind of makes sense.

Growth comes in many forms.

A lack of titles between you and the guy in charge can be a good thing, I find it painful going through 3-5 different people just to get an answer.

A lack of titles means your title isn't specific, this can be hard to change companies unless you make your own title.

Growth can come in tech and responsibility, I'm a "software engineer" yet I can and do do everything from a BA, Project lead, to DevOps, Dev and QA where necessary.

I make fullstack look like child's play, and I'm happy with that type of growth, because I can see holistically how things are going, where things need more effort, all before management catch wind that something has gone sideways.

I'm more of a learn all the things kind of dev, and be in a position where my skill set can't run dry overnight, then be stuck with a single stack, a single
language / framework, and a title that is full of buzzwords that mean nothing at the end of the day.

But eh, each to their own when it comes to growth. We all end up dead in a gutter somewhere anyway 🤷‍♂️

Best thing about a flat hierarchy is that nobody has to put their shoulder out when it's time to start pointing fingers.

@C0D4 I do get your poin, but you're clearly quite senior and in some good position in your career.

I really want to reach in a position where I would be managing a team or a position where I'd be given some responsibility for a particular aspect of the system, not just a vague this has to be done and you look free so maybe do it. Unless I get that kind of experience, no matter how good I might be as a developer (which again is questionable because how would I know) I'll never be able to grow more.

Tho, as you said, having too many stakeholders to go through would definitely be irritating but at least have one guy in charge of one thing.

I don't wish to sound rude or arrogant but this weird practice just makes me want to rant out here.

It's less about hierarchy I'd guess.

Nowadays many terms are simply burned to charcoal by negative associations.

You can e.g. have teams based on specialties, eg. database / design / UX / UI / ... Which doesn't mean that someone from design who has a knack for logical titty twisters can't help out the database team if he / she feels like it.

The association with finger pointing and needing to have a scape goat is btw exactly what I mean. In a team stuff like this shouldn't exist. Yes, the lead might have some unpleasant stakeholder discussions, but should't piss on the team and whip them afterwards (unless deserved of course. ;) )

Fixed teams with fixed tasks are always a bad idea TM. Doesn't mean the UI team has to work on database stuff, but work should be interdisciplinary - might make sense when UI knows beforehand what the DB can solve before assuming it works out like they expect it (e.g. sorting and aggregation make sense UX wise, but the DB might not survive that).

In management you'll have to compromise in my opinion if you don't want to become the "dreaded arsehole who has no fucking clue". You have to talk to everyone. You have to hold hands, whip arses and have the calmness to listen to someone you rather wish to behead and piss in his dead face.

Sadly that means that most of the time you have to compromise on your own agenda and be very flexible and inventive regarding your task load. Which is quite the contraposition to having a fixed set of tasks and a well defined responsibility....

I agree with the majority of commenters that the issue isn’t really in the non-hierarchical structure per se, it’s in the people in this case. For us, an officially flat structure works like a charm. There’s no finger pointing, no scape goating. Everyone takes responsibility of their own work, and everyone takes responsibility of their teams work: we all realise that we can’t point a finger only to the author of bad code, we need to wiggle it at ourselves, too, for letting bad code through the review.

Also, a flat hierarchy doesn’t mean no one is responsible. It means everyone is equally responsible and it is up to the team to divide work.

To mere mortals, constrained by the burden of and satisfied by the convenience of causality, the arc of time bends so imperceptibly that the horizon looks like an endless flat plane. Only the elder Gods, or those who see themselves as having ascended to such cosmic awareness (plus the odd time traveler here, there and when) see the trajectory from whence we came, and it is they who project the vectors of where we will end up. Probably.

…this is getting a bit long in the tooth, isn’t it?

*everyone nods*

The flat-hierarchy is a see-saw.

*audience booes*