>if I extrapolate stuff I've seen in smaller places Makes me wonder where they got their ideas, maybe they are just imitating larger companies. It's real bad

>if I extrapolate stuff I've seen in smaller places Makes me wonder where they got their ideas, maybe they are just imitating larger companies. It's real bad when you get a refugee from a large bureaucratic org into any key position somewhere much smaller that would really need to grow a lot to compare at all. Ultimate decision-makers sometimes think that type of overpaid climber will prepare them to grow to the size of the company they once worked at. When the opposite is true because they thrive on the bureaucracy more than the business, and can barely perform when all that overgrown bureaucracy is not there at their disposal. And you don't want to pattern your company like a large bureaucracy until it is actually large. And then only deploy the bureaucracy part judiciously when and if it becomes absolutely necessary, no reason to do it the 19th century way any more. From another comment: >Sounds like bad product management as much as bad engineering. I mean, the outcome — a bloated product — is bad for everyone: the users in the first place, the engineers building the product, but also the PM who can't conceivably be proud of shipping a bad product. "Bless their hearts, they don't know any better." "This is why we can't have good things."