The backlash against running firms like progressive schools has begun

For instance, he conflates the move to open plan offices, which is seen as increasing communication within teams, but also enables an almost oppressive level of employee monitoring, with googles propensity to space hoppers. These are quite different things, coming from quite different places. Open plan offices have very little to do with happy employees, and everything to do with productivity.

I detect a subtext when he says 'hierarchical is better, managers should think about strategy, Blackberry CEOs are a professional manager and a technician (which is a loaded word, as it means a low skilled technical worker).

I mean, is this a backlash against the increasingly irrelevance of management in flat organizations? If we read an article by an IT worker, explaining that Amazon Cloud might be making him irrelevant, but companies migrating to it are making a huge mistake, then we would see his true motivations in writing that. I wonder if computer enabled flat management is making people like Schumpeter feel under threat.

The idea of risks and experimentation, is that companies like Google are not creating products through a predictable process - they are farming black swans.

You can manufacture software to spec predictably. If you can find developers who will work to spec, remain motivated without personal control of their work, and generally put up with being treated like a production line worker, you can make software on a production line. Infosys do just this.

But you can't manufacture technological progress, the next big thing. Because the creation, validation, and creative implementation of ideas is not something that comes out of a factory. Sony try this. Look where that gets them.

"It is rather absurd for a technology firm to provide slides for staff to play on, and to let them wear silly propeller-hats"

"Time was when firms modelled themselves on the armed forces, with officers (who thought about strategy) and chains of command"

It always amuses me to read these lofty articles from academics and journalists about how multi-billion-dollar companies are doing it wrong.

Models are always faulty in some way, but using them appropriately can be a good thing. The problem many of these corporate styles addresses is that it's very easy to overconstrain your solution space without realizing it. This turns out to be extremely important in creative tasks. Not so much everywhere, but in places where teams are supposed to be both creating and radically optimizing their work streams? Makes a huge difference.

We're also seeing the emergence of a personal corporate brand, where companies are supposed to have personalities, like people. Employees are encouraged to get Twitter accounts. Everything that faces the public is supposed to look like "Hey! We're having a blast here, and we can't wait to help you out." The majority of the corporate submarine pieces we see on HN have this subtext.

These are major changes. Perhaps you can lay it all at the door of the Montessori style, but I kinda doubt it. Instead, I think the author is just making a blanket assertion, creating a bit of a straw man in order to set it on fire. As long as it encourages critical thinking about these things, that's not a bad thing.

Specifically, the first half of the article is about "Montessory-style" business leadership. The second half cites a survey or two that criticize excessive collaboration within teams and open-plan office layouts.

It seems intended to mislead the reader into conflating these two criticisms of very specific issues with criticisms of the entire so-called "Montessory-style" business approach. But I don't think the article contains any actual evidence of the backlash claimed in the title.