The Paradox of Equal Anxiousness

Julian is typing. The little gray bubbles in the Slack channel dance, pause, and disappear, leaving 21 of us suspended in a state of high-altitude anxiety. It’s 4:01 PM on a Tuesday, and we are waiting for a decision on the Q3 budget. In any other company, there would be a department head or a VP of Finance who would simply sign the document. But here, at our ‘radically transparent’ and ‘entirely horizontal’ tech sanctuary, we don’t have titles. We have ‘roles.’ We don’t have bosses; we have ‘lead links.’ And Julian, the founder who insists he is just another guy in a t-shirt, is currently the only person with the Slack permissions to approve the integration that 11 of us have spent 31 days building. The bubbles vanish. Julian has left the channel. The decision is pushed to a ‘sync’ that hasn’t been scheduled yet. We are all equal, apparently, but some of us are more equal when it comes to the ‘enter’ key.

Pearl A., our inventory reconciliation specialist, sits across from me, her face illuminated by the cold blue light of a spreadsheet that contains 401 rows of unresolved discrepancies. Pearl is the kind of person who finds peace in the binary. To her, an item is either in the warehouse or it isn’t. She doesn’t understand the ‘vibe-based’ management style that has infected the modern workplace. Last week, she tried to get a signature for a $101 equipment repair. She was told to ‘socialize the idea’ with the team first. She spent 51 minutes wandering the open-plan office, looking for the person with the authority to say yes, only to be told by three different ‘peers’ that they didn’t want to ‘impose their will’ on the budget. Pearl ended up paying for the part herself and filing an expense report that will likely sit in a digital purgatory for 21 weeks because nobody wants to be the ‘bad guy’ who denies a claim.

The Cycle of Shadow Power

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This is the great lie of the flat hierarchy. We were promised a utopia where meritocracy would flourish and the stifling weight of middle management would be lifted. Instead, we’ve traded the visible, accountable power of a traditional org chart for a shadowy, invisible power based on proximity, charisma, and the ability to survive a 101-minute meeting without losing your mind.

– Internal Observation

When you remove formal structures, you don’t remove power. You just make it impossible to track. In a pyramid, you know who is at the top. You might hate them, you might think they’re incompetent, but at least you know where to send the grievance. In a circle, everyone is looking at everyone else, waiting for a signal that never officially comes.

The Tyranny of Structurelessness

I tried to meditate this morning to escape this frustration. I set a timer for 11 minutes and sat on a cushion I bought for $51. I spent at least 31 percent of that time checking how much time was left. I am bad at stillness because stillness feels like the ambiguity of my job. If I’m not moving, I’m falling behind in the invisible race. Meditation is supposed to be a flat hierarchy for the mind, where every thought is treated with equal importance, but my brain doesn’t work that way. The thought about the unpaid invoice for 11 units of server rack space always shouts louder than the thought about the breath. I checked my watch 21 times. I am a creature of structure, even when I’m trying to destroy it.

In our office, the ‘open door policy’ is a psychological trap. Julian’s door is literally open-it’s a glass-walled fishbowl in the corner-but he is never actually in the room. He is ‘floating.’ He is ‘connecting.’ He is everywhere and nowhere, a benevolent ghost who haunts our Trello boards. Because there is no formal process for promotion, getting a raise has become a game of high school popularity. You don’t get a bump in pay because you reconciled 901 accounts with 100% accuracy; you get it because you went on a 41-minute coffee walk with the person who has the most ‘social capital.’ It’s exhausting. It forces introverts like Pearl A. to perform a version of extroversion that feels like wearing a lead suit. She’s brilliant at inventory, but she’s terrible at ‘leveraging her personal brand’ within the company Slack.

We pretend that structure is the enemy of creativity, but the opposite is true. Constraints are where art happens. When you know exactly what your boundaries are, you are free to play within them. When the boundaries are invisible and shifting, you spend all your energy just trying not to trip over them. I remember when I bought my last phone. I didn’t want a ‘collaborative purchasing experience.’ I didn’t want to ‘align’ with a consultant on the ‘narrative’ of my digital life. I wanted a clear price, a clear specification, and a guarantee that the device would work. I went to Bomba.md because there is a refreshing honesty in a straightforward transaction. There is a price. There is a product. There is a delivery. It is hierarchical in the best way: the customer has a need, and the provider fulfills it. There is no ambiguity. There are no hidden Slack channels where the price of the phone is being ‘discussed’ by a committee of people who have never used one.

Pearl A. eventually gave up on the inventory software. She started keeping a secret paper ledger in her desk. She told me, ‘If the system is a cloud, I need a rock.’ She’s right. Her ledger has 21 columns, and every single entry is signed and dated. It is the most hierarchical thing in the building, and it is the only thing that actually works. When the ‘lead links’ come to her asking why we are missing 61 units of hardware, she doesn’t talk about vibes. She opens the book and points to a name. It’s brutal, it’s direct, and it’s the only reason we haven’t gone bankrupt.

Rules Protect the Vulnerable

I once believed in the flat hierarchy. I really did. I thought it would empower the ‘little guy.’ But after 11 years in the workforce, I’ve realized that the ‘little guy’ is the one who gets crushed the hardest when there are no rules. Rules protect the vulnerable. Rules ensure that the person who does the work gets the credit, rather than the person who is the best at talking about the work. When you remove the ladder, people still climb; they just start stepping on each other’s faces instead of the rungs. I saw it happen 31 times last year during our ‘peer-led’ performance reviews. The people who were liked got 11 percent raises. The people who were merely excellent, like Pearl, got ‘encouragement to engage more with the community.’

We are currently 151 days into our ‘no-manager experiment,’ and the cracks are becoming canyons. The founder still thinks it’s a success because he doesn’t have to deal with the ‘drama’ of being a boss. He doesn’t realize that the drama hasn’t disappeared; it’s just been redistributed among the rest of us. We are all now part-time therapists, part-time politicians, and full-time victims of a system that refuses to admit it has a head. I looked at the clock again. It’s 5:01 PM. Julian is back in the Slack channel. He posts a single emoji: a shrug. The 21 of us who were waiting for a budget approval now have to interpret what a shrug means for our departmental goals.