> For how much power they have over team organization and processes, software middle management has nearly no accountability for outcomes.

Can we also address the fact that “software spend” is distributed disproportionately to management at all levels and people who actually write the software are nickel and dimed. You’d save billions in spend and boost productivity massively if the management is bare bones and is held accountable like the rest of the folks.

that's how the inner sanctum engineering in Apple worked, just like you proposed, at least from 15 years ago to within the last 10 years. i could have been in a very lucky time window to have had that luxury, but it had been an Apple mandate to not have deep hierarchies at least in engineering.