[hawkice]

Compare/Contrast: I worked at a startup where I was the only direct report to someone who spent the overwhelming majority of his day watching videos of women exercising (file this under "things I wouldn't have to know if we didn't have an open floor plan"). I spoke to _his_ boss (who sat two seats down from me, because it's a startup), who said the reason I had to go through those ridiculous hoops and charades and end up with an unusual workload was because the guy I reported to had been there a long time and, ya know, he deserved his fancy title and direct report.

Don't get me wrong, dysfunction at large companies is disproportionately large most of the time. But man, even smaller bits of nonsense can be extremely frustrating when you see them up close.

[hga]

The thing about startups is that very few of them can afford this sort of dead weight. Perhaps for a little while, but it's one of the things that results in so high a fraction of them failing. Which has been true in two I've been in that suffered from this.