alt Hacker NewsIMO, this could be solved by having a finance team with good workflows and a real human resources team/psychologist on staff that would handle all of the interpersonal drama. It's an interesting anecdote but I don't think it was that great of an attempt or structured well enough to work.
> this could be solved
With a USB stick and FTP. It's very easy to underestimate a problem when you've never encountered it or tried to tackle it in practice. Your shallow dismissal gives that away and brings no insight.
Human beings will always organically organize hierarchically. In a group one will have more initiative, one will be happier to be told what to do, etc. In the end informally you will end up with the same structure. And it's hell to deal with that when formally all have the same authority so none can override each other, but one guy just gathered enough support to do whatever he wants.
Do you think someone far away from everything you do will have a magic "workflow" that tells them what to do about the budget you requested, about the strategic decision you need, or about your conflicts, about who has to do the nice jobs or the shitty ones? And why would they have any say, they're not the boss.
Your logic is no better that those pretending today that a team of AI agents "with good workflows" can just replace all the programmers.