Manage automatic creation of direct reports group

I like the general idea JaredMatfess but I fear this would cause a significant slowdown in innovation and the introduction of new features and products within Office 365.

Default on solves two important items for Microsoft:

1. Usage data across a broad set of tenants with varying characteristics. Microsoft immediately gets a look at how many users are using the new thing, how many are maintaining their usage, how they are actually using it, where they are using it, where they are trying to use it but failing, when and where users are abandoning, etc. This lets them iterate quickly based on quantified data from a representative sample, instead of just the grumpy community members who shout the loudest.
2. Internal ROI when a larger status meeting rolls around and that team's VP asks "What did you build, how much impact did it have, and what did we learn as a team?" If the answers to impact and learning are soft and/or not representatitve, eventually that team is going to stop getting approval to build things rapidly and are going to end up with more process on them to go do "research" for much longer periods of time about what the customer wants. Not saying research is bad, but 3-6 months of delay even for smaller features is how you end up stagnating and getting disrupted by competitors.

Believe me though, I understand the concerns as my own org struggles with these types of things on occasion.

A compromise I think I could get behind would include two things:

1. Easier ways to turn off things via UI. Not every org has PowerShell gurus on call to rapidly make changes, especially smaller orgs. A UI switch should be made available for any new major tool or any feature that would introduce additional data into OUR tenant. Default would still be on, but only takes a few clicks to turn it off.
2. Forced communication to Global Admins. It should become a requirement to have valid contact methods stored in the system for someone to become Global Admin of a tenant. Business email, personal email, phone number, etc. Without these stored, verified, and periodically re-verified by Microsoft, Global Admin permissions will not be granted. This needs to become a push, not a pull like the message center. This stuff is far too important to rely on someone looking at some list of messages in one single spot that they may not spend that much time in on a daily basis. Shove it in their faces in any and all channels and make them acknowledge receipt and understanding. IMO, Global Admins who aren't aware of these big changes automatically showing up in their tenants should not be Global Admins in the first place.

This would allow things to be turned off easily if desired, but forces attention and understanding of new things coming. A switch to turn all new things off by default would just reinforce lazy Global Admin behavior and allow them to ignore new things completely and sit happily in their silo maintaining status quo.

Probably somewhat controversial, but if status quo is really what you are looking for or is required by some sort of ultra strict regulations, Office 365 may not be the best home for you. Those with these conditions should have stayed on-prem. People seem to forget that Office 365 is a SaaS offering that changes rapidly. This is not an IaaS lift and shift.