Conventional wisdom suggests that companies need to have professional managers, who are mainly tasked with managing the people who do the actual work, but Airbnb likes to do things differently.
Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky recently revealed one of the most radical organizational changes his company has implemented: eliminating traditional people managers entirely. In a candid discussion about the company’s management philosophy, Chesky explained how Airbnb restructured its leadership model around functional expertise rather than traditional management hierarchies. The approach, he says, was inspired by none other than Apple’s legendary design chief Jonathan Ive, and represents a fundamental rethinking of how tech companies organize their teams.
According to Chesky, the transformation was comprehensive and decisive: “We removed the layers of management. I got rid of layers of management. I went back to functional. I got rid of all managers, or they left the company and we said, you can only manage the function.”
The new model requires leaders to be hands-on experts first, managers second. “If you’re an expert, so the head of design has to actually manage the work first. You don’t manage people, you manage people through the work,” Chesky explained. This represents a stark departure from the conventional corporate structure where managers often oversee teams without directly engaging in the day-to-day work.
Chesky credits Jonathan Ive with inspiring this philosophy: “I learned this from Jony Ive because most heads of design at most tech companies don’t actually manage design. They manage the people. I’m like, how can you manage the people separate from the design?” He continued, channeling Ive’s approach: “Jony Ive would say no. My main job is to manage the work and I build a team and we design together, but I am mostly looking at the work. I’m not having career conversations all day long. That’s crazy.”
This organizational restructuring reflects a broader trend in the tech industry toward flatter hierarchies and more specialized leadership. Companies like Netflix have long operated with fewer traditional managers, emphasizing “keeper” teams of high performers. Similarly, Spotify’s squad model and GitLab’s all-remote structure challenge conventional management wisdom. Airbnb’s approach goes further by explicitly requiring functional expertise from all leaders, effectively eliminating the traditional “manager track” that separates individual contributors from people managers. The implications are significant: this model could reduce bureaucracy, improve decision-making speed, and ensure that those making strategic decisions have deep domain expertise. However, it also places enormous pressure on functional leaders to excel at both technical work and team leadership simultaneously, potentially limiting scalability as organizations grow.