Why Does Fal Have No Pure Managers?

fal co-founders Burkay Gür and Gorkem Yurtseven say fal has no pure managers and does not plan to add them. fal is flatter than a typical startup, and the deepest reporting line is two levels, by design. The management layer is what they call super individual contributors: people strong enough at the job to do hands-on work and also lead teams. fal also has four forward deployed engineers.

Teams form around people in the group who are unusually good. Strong hires come in, leaders emerge, and teams gather around them. Leadership has been built that way from the start, even before the super individual contributor name was in use.

The shape has a limit. Communication bottlenecks show up while scaling, and a central problem is how to keep a growing team aligned. Check-ins keep fal flat until something breaks, rather than adding management layers in advance.