Agreed. It is my understanding that the best companies are led by their original founders (cf. Apple, Google, Oracle) or by people nurtured for years to become their leaders (Microsoft, IBM).
As an organization, it appears to be focusing on keeping as flat of an organization as possible. In addition they just simply cut to the chase, and hire middle-managers purely to act as liaisons rather than drivers, and save themselves the couple years of failure they are bound to endure while a new division gets organized "properly" (as in the old way).
This has bad sides too, I've heard from numerous people that, when compared to other organizations, most of the engineers in Google have a very hard time understanding what their managers actually do. Additionally, it also can prevent unified visions from flowing down from the top in as structured a process as you might see in a traditional organization.
But we now have more than a decade to observe companies like Google applying this sort of obvious management philosophy and now have lots of lessons learned we can apply going forward.
I don't know enough about the internal organizational structure at Apple and Oracle, but I'd wager they are much more like the traditional management model than Google's semi-flat structure. Apple in particular is likely a very hierarchical organization (just a guess) due to the necessity in carrying out Jobs' vision.
Fixed it for you.:-)
That Paul Allen didn't liked to show up on newspapers doesn't mean he did nothing.