Do Programmers Need Line Chefs?

If you ever watch Iron Chef, you'll see that the chefs are not competing by themselves. Each typically has two assistants, called line chefs, who are assistants. They are capable enough of doing most tasks. The main chef mainly directs their work. (It's perhaps a mistake to refer to them as sous chef, because the sous chef manages the line chefs, while the executive chef may not even be in the kitchen, having to handle office work).

I was wondering whether programmers might not benefit from this kind of apprenticeship. The main coder would offer up a design, and there would be assistants to do various subtasks. The question is how well the division of labor would occur. One could imagine the main coder doing too little work, and pushing all work to the assistants. But if it worked well, it would seem to be an interesting way to pass information on.