This is why they pay you. If they are not paying you enough, well ... you'll come to some conclusion. The risk to a small company is that the product will not

This is why they pay you. If they are not paying you enough, well ... you'll come to some conclusion. The risk to a small company is that the product will not make money, impressions don't convert, and the runway runs out. The risk to established companies is every other risk - software license risk, security risks, etc, etc, etc. Big Co also runs some or all IT as a cost center - people don't get to make the product better, it's difficult to staff appropriately for the work load. Big Co also treats people as cogs to churn out some "work" - management at the top cannot understand or help with every project, so they have tools to understand what hours are spent on which project. Then they expect those tools to tell them something useful, so they hound the middle managers based on the work recorded in the tools. "You manage what you measure" Friction is minimal when your job is very repeatable, or when you don't actually try to do anything.