How Valve hires, how it fires, and how much it pays 13 years ago
Very interesting point! I would also like to add that the type of product being "manufactured" adds to the general direction of how a company is being run. If a company is full of people that understand enough of the business to shape future requirements, my belief is that, they tend to gain more from self organizing than companies that only have a subset of people with enough domain knowledge. If you have a very narrow and deep domain and 1/10 employees that really understand enough to be able to shape future backlogs, then having everyone self organize will not really solve the bottle neck that is those people.