[nine_zeros]

> One company asked me whether I'd like to join the monitoring team or the container team, to which I replied "why can't I work in whatever team needs me the most, and switch whenever needed?"

Far too many companies are designed as management empires instead of as engineers-as-drivers of change. This means that you are being only hired as a headcount in a reporting chain, not as a versatile engineer that can be help boost a company. They'll impose ineffective policies such as you cannot switch teams before 18 months, or a manager can sabotage your mobility with some reviews. All of this is designed to keep the corporate structure inflexible.

It is a structural problem in most American corporations, that they are unable to get past. Faang, and specifically Facebook, encouraged so much mobility - and it showed in the way they completely smashed larger competitors like Google, Microsoft in the last decade.

[outworlder]

> Far too many companies are designed as management empires instead of as engineers-as-drivers of change

Well said.

I'll just say that all companies (at least, large US-based ones) are like that. Every single one of them.

The trick is to have a 'management empire' that's large enough that it spans most of the required functions. That way at least some engineers are able to move inside the fiefdom and not bump heads against some other high level manager's domain.

[aprdm]

Not true. There's a lot of exceptions to the rule. I was lucky enough to work on a couple on my 2 decades career so far.

[userinanother]

Very well said it’s a company within a company. You want to be in the most diverse sub company