This has been my anecdotal experience also, working at startups. I noticed it in the reverse direction: once $BIGCO employees (often "big catches") come to a g

This has been my anecdotal experience also, working at startups. I noticed it in the reverse direction: once $BIGCO employees (often "big catches") come to a growing-from-small-to-midsize startup, some level of political gamesmanship is introduced. If your department has a manager hire with a bad case of the politics, you and your soon-to-be ex-colleagues may be in for a wild ride. It only makes sense that, if you extrapolate that behavior to the source where it came from, you'd see a lot more of it. There are some big companies that seem to be exceptions to this rule, but there are much more that prove it.