> In most cases, their job is to simply act as a buffer and propagate upper layer's wishes to mere mortals Well, they're there to take care of the details of i

> In most cases, their job is to simply act as a buffer and propagate upper layer's wishes to mere mortals Well, they're there to take care of the details of implementing the execs' orders. That is a necessary function for scale. An analogy: Field Marshal Haig wants a village taken. He doesn't shout at the infantry; rather there's a chain of command which fractally decomposes the order into a coherent plan for achieving the goal. We'll need artillery to soften the defenses, then infantry will flank the fortifications; ok put a battery here and load it up with this kind of shell; and so on down to the platoon level where little groups of soldiers will tackle micro-scale obstacles along the way (there's an enemy sniper in that church, etc.) So the reasons for hiring this layer are sound. I'm not really arguing with you though: it does provide value to those at the top (arguably not necessarily long-term value). I just don't think, in most cases, that it's a conscious Machiavellian plan to stuff the mid-tier with remote-controlled, plausibly deniable bastards. I just think that people in those positions end up exhibiting bastardish behavior circumstantially. (Although of course if there was such a devious scheme anywhere, it'd probably be Amazon.) So I still think that it's largely intrinsic.