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> Avoid at all costs the combination of: new manager, 1 report, report is new-to-industry, manager is not a subject-matter expert.

This is interesting. Consulting teams are often structured exactly this way, with a Lead managing 2 "managers," each leading one Associate/Analyst. I wonder why that antipattern is so consistent...

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The latter two would be more universally true in a consulting context, correct? Could be that managers at consulting firms have to manage their clients a lot more than a team normally would, so the extra managerial bandwidth could be dedicated to maintaining that relationship.

I suspect it's because the job titles are meaningless hierarchy to keep people happy, and collapse into a 1 boss N employees structure any time anything important happens.

OP's co-author here. This has been my experience in consulting as well. In practice, most consulting projects are led by the partners / seniormost managers in a tribal fashion so this distinction doesn't matter as much.

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