There is an HBR article titled “If Your Boss Could Do Your Job, You’re More Likely to Be Happy at Work”. Basically the main point is:

The benefit of having a highly competent boss is easily the largest positive influence on a typical worker’s level of job satisfaction.

What does it tell us? Small and middle sized companies should focus on having a competent manager who is able to do his employee’s tasks in the same or better level. DHH wrote, that everyone in the company is a specialist, and on the side they’re managing the work, there are no full-time manager at all.

On the other side, I do not know how does this work at C-level executives in multinational firms, where coordinating is so much effort, that it’s almost impossible to do on the side.