A video from another era—2013, suddenly found me. Bryan Cantrill talking with the unshakeable confidence of someone who hasn’t yet lived through the next decade.

His proposition from back then is simple: build a company around brilliant engineers, a grand purpose, and almost no structure. I glance at a chart made in 2021, a prediction for how we’ll all work in 2031. It’s funny—the “future” it describes with words like “Leaderless Leadership” and “Non-Hierarchical” is a perfect echo of this decade-old rant. And he’s not just talking; he’s building his company, Oxide, on these exact principles right now.

His core argument is that many standard corporate practices are actively harmful. He frames it like this:

• Hate the ritual of the formal annual performance review? You don’t actually need it.
• Tired of the obsession with hierarchical titles and career ladders? You don’t actually need them.
• Find the idea of stack ranking your colleagues destructive? You don’t actually need to do it.
• Frustrated by non-technical managers creating date-driven death marches? You don’t actually need them.

chart from https://medium.com/mapresearch/how-organisations-are-changing-cf80f3e2300