Empire building was a major problem at a local company I worked for. They got around it by setting up multiple reporting chains and co-managers. If you were a

Empire building was a major problem at a local company I worked for. They got around it by setting up multiple reporting chains and co-managers. If you were a manager at a certain level and you worked with certain departments, you got to say that all of the people in that department "reported to" you. It created a laughable situation where there were only a few thousand people in the company, but I knew several dozen managers who had 200-400 people "reporting" to them. Individuals could technically "report to" a dozen managers, though they may never interact with those managers. They all proudly display their number of reports on their LinkedIn profiles.