It sounds like you've gone from one extreme to another. None of the things you mention pale in comparison to software engineering at all. They are all solvable problems that many people can do. Sometime they are difficult, often they are not. Managers are certainly not useless and do work for certain types of organizations. They are not always needed though. Believe it or not there are people capable of managing and programming at the same time. You seem to be one of them so your view point is very strange.
No, I've actually mostly worked in well balanced places. It is my experience that technology is the lesser issue and the one with the smallest impact. That's not to diminish the highly skilled developers - the work just have less impact that we seem to believe.
I do not believe in self organizing teams. I have not seem them work. Without direction the team will fumble until someone assumes control. I have also not seen many happy in such an environment.
The opposite is strict top-down control, such as what is often described and lamented on HN, is equally bad. No one wants to work under a dictator.
There's a balance to be struck between authority and autonomy.
