I have seen this too. I worked for a while as a contractor for the U.S. federal government (IT/programming), and saw that the next rung up for me within the fed

I have seen this too. I worked for a while as a contractor for the U.S. federal government (IT/programming), and saw that the next rung up for me within the fed was becoming a "full fed" and entering management. I saw what many of those people did and ran away screaming, taking a higher-paying alternative coding gig instead. One of them had worked in the past for Microsoft and said the fed was remarkably similar. I suspect any organization approaches the fed exponentially as its size approaches, say, tens of thousands.