Reading through the OP and comments it seems like a lot of people have never actually experienced a decent manager. If the only manager(s) you've ever had have only caused problems and micromanaged you with no help whatsoever then yes I guess you want to remove all management layers completely.
The downside to removing all management layers is:
* You'll have to interact with the directors of a company directly. I have experience with this and from this I can tell you that you'll find they don't share the viewpoints of most devs. They will expect things done yesterday and all possible corners to be cut. They don't care about Tech debt. Your estimates will always be too high and they will demand they be cut down to the unreasonable. They leave 0 time for testing as far as they know the dev work is done once the dev says so. They don't care about the complexity of implementation, they only see complexity in what they are asking you. SO if They ask "build me the next facebook" that is quite a simple statement but the implementation is very complex they see that because the statement is simple so should be the implementation
* Good luck ever getting a pay raise or a promotion. A decent manager will track you through those things as you work for a company and push for them on your behalf. A director only sees development as a cost to be reduced
* Much easier to directly blame developers when things go wrong. You bet your ass that if prod goes down there will be hell to pay. Fire the dev that brought it down. A good manager shields the team from this as they spread the blame of many departments making it hard to fire anyone
* You won't get any time for personal development. Kiss all those pluralsight courses goodbye that costs money. A yearly conference ? who's paying for that. Remember that the directors of a company will see money being spent as their own money because every dollar spent reduces EBITDA which will reduce their mega bonus
* Any problems you have with other devs are now yours to fix. Remember HR aren't their to help you they are there to help the company
* Projects will be dumped on you that are way outside your field of expertise. Directors often lump all devs into the same bucket. So for example if there is a new project that involves AI and no-one on the teams got any real experience then tough luck get her done
* You'll have to deal with strange requests. For example given chatgpt has been in the news a lot you'll suddenly be told to add chatgpt to the product regardless if it makes any sense. Normally a good manager would bat these types of things off to protect the dev team
* Time management is your problem. You'll be given an end date and told everything has to be done for that date
Note I get that having too many managers is bad but you ideally want small IC to manager ratio so that you are getting the benefit.
The downside to removing all management layers is:
* You'll have to interact with the directors of a company directly. I have experience with this and from this I can tell you that you'll find they don't share the viewpoints of most devs. They will expect things done yesterday and all possible corners to be cut. They don't care about Tech debt. Your estimates will always be too high and they will demand they be cut down to the unreasonable. They leave 0 time for testing as far as they know the dev work is done once the dev says so. They don't care about the complexity of implementation, they only see complexity in what they are asking you. SO if They ask "build me the next facebook" that is quite a simple statement but the implementation is very complex they see that because the statement is simple so should be the implementation
* Good luck ever getting a pay raise or a promotion. A decent manager will track you through those things as you work for a company and push for them on your behalf. A director only sees development as a cost to be reduced
* Much easier to directly blame developers when things go wrong. You bet your ass that if prod goes down there will be hell to pay. Fire the dev that brought it down. A good manager shields the team from this as they spread the blame of many departments making it hard to fire anyone
* You won't get any time for personal development. Kiss all those pluralsight courses goodbye that costs money. A yearly conference ? who's paying for that. Remember that the directors of a company will see money being spent as their own money because every dollar spent reduces EBITDA which will reduce their mega bonus
* Any problems you have with other devs are now yours to fix. Remember HR aren't their to help you they are there to help the company
* Projects will be dumped on you that are way outside your field of expertise. Directors often lump all devs into the same bucket. So for example if there is a new project that involves AI and no-one on the teams got any real experience then tough luck get her done
* You'll have to deal with strange requests. For example given chatgpt has been in the news a lot you'll suddenly be told to add chatgpt to the product regardless if it makes any sense. Normally a good manager would bat these types of things off to protect the dev team
* Time management is your problem. You'll be given an end date and told everything has to be done for that date
Note I get that having too many managers is bad but you ideally want small IC to manager ratio so that you are getting the benefit.