I’ve been in R&D long enough to think I’d seen every organizational oddity, but lately I look at my reporting chain and just… sigh. I’m a Principal Engineer, the most technical person on my team, and yet there are seven layers of management between me and the top. Seven. At this point it feels like performance art.
And the part that blows my mind? We’re a software company. We really only need three groups to function: developers who ship code, sales/AEs who bring in revenue, and top leadership who set direction. Everything else should be supporting those three — not ballooning into a management ecosystem that needs its own food chain.