If you have more than a few engineers, it’s inefficient—not to mention disempowering—if every decision needs to end up on the desk of the CTO or a senior manager. You get better outcomes and designs if experienced engineers have the time to go deep and build the context and the authority to set the right technical direction. That doesn’t mean engineers set technical direction alone. Managers, as the people responsible for assigning headcount to technical initiatives, need to be part of major technical decisions.
