The Montessori Workplace:

A Necessary Alternative to Archaic Corporate Systems

Today someone reposted a letter from a sofware engineer named Igor Tsvetkov, who recently left Meta to return to Google. Mobility between major tech companies is common, with several executives having also announced their departure in the past weeks. What distinguishes the case of this software engineer for me though, is the unusually high degree of transparency surrounding his decision.

In a publicly posted LinkedIn letter which received thousands of “likes” (copied below), Tsvetkov stated that he did not feel set up for success in his senior role at Meta and formally requested a step down in level. He wanted a demotion rather than a promotion. Meta’s internal structure, like many corporate hierarchies, did not permit downward mobility. When the request could not be accommodated, Tsvetkov approached Google to inquire about returning at a lower level, a proposal that likewise challenged the organization’s standard career architecture, but his request was eventually met.

Tsvetkov’s situation illustrates a broader structural tension in corporate organizations: corporate career systems are designed almost exclusively for single-vector, upward progression. These frameworks generally assume that successful employees will only advance in a linear, vertical manner, equating growth with promotion rather than with recalibration, skill deepening, or strategic reorientation. Downward or lateral movement, when it better aligns with an individual’s long-term development, is often devalued.

This case also reveals how rigid leveling systems can treat employees as components within an efficiency-optimized machine rather than as individuals whose cognitive development and expertise formation are nonlinear processes. For engineers, researchers, and creative problem-solvers, periods of consolidation, exploration, and lateral skill acquisition are not deviations from progress but essential elements of it. Strict upward-only mobility models may be misaligned with the realities of human development. I view them as a thing of the past.

Tsvetkov’s public acknowledgment of this mismatch is significant. It offers a rare example of a senior technology leader articulating, from inside the system, the limitations of contemporary corporate frameworks. His remarks invite organizations to reconsider how they define success and to imagine pathways that can accommodate nonlinear professional trajectories.

My own experience reinforces this perspective. In roles where I was permitted to develop in multiple directions rather than follow a single prescribed track, my capabilities expanded, sometimes doubling or tripling, as did the value I could contribute to projects. At MSG, for example, the opportunity to build a digital content program from the ground up, despite it not being in my job description at the time, produced entirely new revenue streams. At BuzzFeed, allowing my team members to trial roles in other departments for a month or two, consistently led to higher performance and, in some cases, the realization that their strengths were better aligned elsewhere internally, which is a good thing.

A similar dynamic shaped my work in litigation. I went from a Director-level role, to being mid to low-level. When asked at my interview why I wanted to do such a thing. My answer was uncommon; I wanted to expand my mind more than I wanted to step on another rung of the same ladder. Even as an assistant though, I was encouraged to take more time on cases for which I had strong intuition, particularly those touching technology, e-discovery, and digital research, as opportunities for deeper strategic learning. When I tapped into something important, I was allowed to run with it, even if I, now and then, ran into a wall. I was taking my tech instincts, and applying them in new ways, which excited me. I sat in on high-level calls, accompanied counsel to the courthouse to take notes, and handled substantial portions of the research and drafting. This approach enabled me to play a key role in producing the memoranda that ultimately disqualified government attorneys from a complex case, a significant win for the firm.

I am often asked how I have been able to do so many different things in my career, how I’ve met such a wide range of people and why I seem to know something about so many unrelated domains. People sometimes call me a “weirdo,” an “anomaly,” or a “polymath.” The reality is simpler: I did not come through traditional structures, whether in family, education, or entry into the workforce. As a result, I never approached my path through the lens of a traditional system.

I have spent as much time speaking with Impressionist specialists at Sotheby’s as with astrophysicists from Harvard. I’ve studied nineteenth-century theatre while working on architectural blueprints with leading architects. I’ve learned to operate technocranes and read manuscripts for well-known authors before publication. I’ve sketched in museums, traded code in online forums, built new parameters to support content monetization for sales teams, and spent late nights over Thai food conducting legal research. Some of these roles being “senior”, some being “junior”, in no particular order.

The point is that I do not impose boundaries on where my mind can go, and I don’t think truly intelligent people do. It reminds me of the approach by Doctor Maria Montessori , who began studying children while working in psychiatric clinics and public schools in Rome.

Montessori believed, based on observation, that human beings do not learn in a linear, top-down way. Instead: growth happens in bursts (“sensitive periods”), curiosity is intrinsic, not externally motivated, mastery emerges through exploration, and cognitive and motor development are linked. She found that traditional classrooms, with rigid schedules and single-vectored progression, were mismatched to the way humans actually learn.

Increasingly, I see leaders such as Alex Karp approaching the workplace in the same way: as a site for continuous learning, exploration, and intellectual play rather than a rigidly defined professional track… or what Karp calls his “artist colony.”

I learned a lot at Harvard, but I learned just as much, if not more, from those organizations who let me grow in any direction I chose.

Ultimately, Tsvetkov’s case and experiences like my own underscore a simple point: humans are not robots (at least not yet). Our growth does not follow a single upward axis. We do not all learn or grow in the same ways. Organizations that recognize and support multi-directional development may unlock far more potential than those that insist on restriction to one focus or linearity.

“Today I left Meta. In a couple of months I will be re-joining Google.

I spent slightly over a year at Meta. I had an amazing and talented team and great infrastructure to work with. Still, I did not fit in perfectly. Senior Staff Software Engineer is a very senior role, in order to perform well, one needs to have deep knowledge of the system that the team is working on, and also good understanding of the ecosystem around it. Even more importantly, one needs to have a lot of credibility, know a lot of important people in adjacent teams, and have their trust. It is very hard to achieve all of that when you join as a new hire from another company and work from a remote office. I felt like my ramp up did not progress as fast as I wanted and it caused a lot of stress. At some point I wished to get a demotion to a lower level such that I could reduce stress while still meaningfully contributing to the company. Unfortunately, Meta does not have a procedure for a demotion.
Instead I got in touch with a Google recruiter and asked if I could re-join as an L6. It was also not easy for Google to make it happen. The easiest for the company is to re-hire you at the same level that you had when you left. Hiring someone at a lower level turned out more tricky, but they were able to do it.
For now I am taking a break in-between the jobs. - Igor”