Was CEO from 2007 through 2016, grew to ~15 employees by 2012. Then did Google for 7 years. My biggest Q coming in was "man, how do they handle the hard problem

Was CEO from 2007 through 2016, grew to ~15 employees by 2012. Then did Google for 7 years. My biggest Q coming in was "man, how do they handle the hard problems in management, like communication?" Answer isn't anything helpful. They just don't. How does conflict actually go down internally? If you're lower on the totem pole, bad. It's verboten to say anything within 100 yards of even "without direction" Same sort of omerta as why it's a bad idea to tell your mother-in-law their Thanksgiving menu is horrifically bad. Your manager's manager picked your manager, your manager hired your coworkers. This also would be a horrible, horrible quality to have as a startup founder. It's a fundamental blindness and lack of accountability. I learned to do exactly what you did: reframe, recognize limits, bite my tongue, adjust my commitments. There's also a point at which you can decide to "just go for it", i.e. if I want a certain project to do well and the leader involved seems like they're on a different planet, I just go do the work for it. This inevitably had ~0 professional payoff and short-term psych costs, but so does throwing in the towel, and it's okay to carefully weigh it sometimes and come out as "I'd rather see this get done / move on from this relationship if they can't handle me tactfully having a real talk about this"