Manage automatic creation of direct reports group

This is one of the worst ideas I've seen come out of Redmond for years, if not ever. And that's saying something.

I've NEVER seen an organization with more than a few hundred people where the Active Directory data is even close to useful. Two of the prime things that are almost always wrong are Department and Manager. Manager most often contains the person you originally worked for when you were hired - if it contains anyone. There's a reason why Hyperfish is a fantastic product idea. So I would wager that a HUGE percentage of the Groups which would be gcreated are going to be meaningless.

Managers have all sorts of ways they work with their employees. If they want to use a Group, that's great, but assuming that it's the right answer for every manager who uses Office 365 is ridiculous. If I have two employees who sit right there with me, I'll never use the Group, even if it's a great idea.

Most people who use SharePoint - even after all these years - struggle with where to "put their stuff". This will automatically create Yet Another Location for Stuff which they will need to rationalize against. Again, they may get it and they may not, but if they don't WANT the Group, then why on earth would you create it?

Managers come and go, there are dotted line reporting structueres, etc. There is simply no way that all of the most common scenarios can possibly be covered here. Any decent-sized organization is going to end up with hundreds or thousands of orphaned or useless Groups.

What about all the governance questions? What happens when a Manager leaves? How does the content in a Group get archived or preserved if a position is eliminated? People sometimes have more than one manager - for real. AD has never supported this, and the Group here won't either - at least well.

The list of reasons why this shouldn't happen is incredibly long, and the reasons that make it a good idea are few - assuming there are any. I can only guess that it's yet another instance where someone at Microsoft's bonus is tied to the number of Groups "deployed". Full speed ahead and **bleep** the customers.