It's worth pointing out that the author was a Stalinist, and so thought the solution to the problem of hierarchies forming implicitly was to make those hierarchies explicit and enshrine them.
The article describes a real problem; it speaks to my experience and the experiences of my comrades; but it offers no real solution and is essentially a defense of the status quo. It doesn't preclude a better solution.
Agree with your points. I find that posting the essay is still quite valuable, though - as an industry we are still enamored with the mythology of structurelessness.
So yeah, her solutions may be pretty questionable, but IMO as an industry we're not even at the point of exploring solutions, considering that so much of our industry doesn't even acknowledge the problem exist.
Until then it's useful to keep flogging the essay until people accept that yeah, this problem actually exists.
Personally, I think that structurelessness is much more possible in "our industry" because it's so culturally, racially, sexually, and class homogeneous. It's worth noting that this article is about feminist activist groups, and not software companies. Software companies have both much more clearly defined goals and much better metrics of measuring their progress towards those goals than feminist activist groups do. That in itself is a gamebreaking difference.
> "Personally, I think that structurelessness is much more possible in 'our industry' because it's so culturally, racially, sexually, and class homogeneous ..."
> "Until then it's useful to keep flogging the essay until people accept that yeah, this problem actually exists."
I fully agree, but I'm pleased to note that this is the first such 'management is dead' story where multiple commenters have given salient counterpoints (small company, no HR/PR disasters to date, who can fire you, etc), rather than jumping on the bandwaggon.
The article describes a real problem; it speaks to my experience and the experiences of my comrades; but it offers no real solution and is essentially a defense of the status quo. It doesn't preclude a better solution.