You don't need to be "flat" for people to be happy, but you do need a decent amount of employee autonomy. You probably need some big-picture direction at 1000+ employees, but you don't need the closed-allocation "you work on this project, or you pack your bags" extortion of most companies.
Some Googlers have autonomy, some don't. I don't care to get into this discussion because for all my criticism of it, I really admire Google (the engineers and the vision, if not the middle management and HR) but I'll just say that the Googlers who've established a basic autonomy are very happy. They pick their projects and have little interest in leaving, unless to do their own startup. However, there's an underclass who face manager-as-SPOF and live or die by their "calibration scores". For them, Google is a closed-allocation company and these people are not happy.
You don't need "flat" structure outright, but open allocation is non-negotiable in technology in 2013.
Some Googlers have autonomy, some don't. I don't care to get into this discussion because for all my criticism of it, I really admire Google (the engineers and the vision, if not the middle management and HR) but I'll just say that the Googlers who've established a basic autonomy are very happy. They pick their projects and have little interest in leaving, unless to do their own startup. However, there's an underclass who face manager-as-SPOF and live or die by their "calibration scores". For them, Google is a closed-allocation company and these people are not happy.
You don't need "flat" structure outright, but open allocation is non-negotiable in technology in 2013.