My first exposure to big company management was, ironically, at a startup. They hired their C-level executives from big companies. Those executives hired VPs and extra layers of management who were also from big companies. Very quickly we had a deep org chart where ICs could be 5 steps removed from the CEO even though they hadn’t decided exactly what product we were going to build.
Everything was done by committee in increments of the 1-hour recurring meeting once a week. You could be on 10 of these recurring meetings for 10 different projects.
The first part of every meeting was a recap of last meeting. The middle part was about 20 minutes of trying to make progress on blocking items while the ex-BigCo managers came up with excuses for why they didn’t do their part yet (usually it was because they had too many meetings). The last 20 minutes was a performative exercise where we decided on action items for the week which we all knew were unlikely to get done.
The company went on like this for years after I left until they ran out of extra funds to keep the charade going. The management scattered to other “startups” where I’ve heard they’re continuing to repeat the same games.
Everything was done by committee in increments of the 1-hour recurring meeting once a week. You could be on 10 of these recurring meetings for 10 different projects.
The first part of every meeting was a recap of last meeting. The middle part was about 20 minutes of trying to make progress on blocking items while the ex-BigCo managers came up with excuses for why they didn’t do their part yet (usually it was because they had too many meetings). The last 20 minutes was a performative exercise where we decided on action items for the week which we all knew were unlikely to get done.
The company went on like this for years after I left until they ran out of extra funds to keep the charade going. The management scattered to other “startups” where I’ve heard they’re continuing to repeat the same games.