Meta’s new AI team has 50 engineers per boss. What could go wrong?

There are flat organizational structures, and then there’s Meta’s new applied AI engineering team. The division, tasked with advancing the tech giant’s superintelligence efforts, will employ a 50-to-1 employee-to-manager ratio, according to the Wall Street Journal, double the 25-to-1 ratio that is usually seen as the outer limit of the so-called span‑of‑control scale. 

The Facebook parent’s one-sided management ratio took aback even those well-versed in flat organizations. “It’s going to end in tragedy is the bottom line,” says André Spicer, executive dean of Bayes Business School in London and a professor of organizational behavior. 

The idea behind a flat organization, in which managers have a large number of direct reports, is that it makes companies more agile by streamlining decision-making processes and positioning management closer to front-line workers and the customer experience. Cross-functional collaboration that isn’t muddled in hierarchy speeds up innovation. Employees who are closer to people of authority are more engaged, with a deeper sense of ownership. Or so the theory goes.

Meta is not alone in embracing a flat structure. Companies across the U.S.........

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