- Poor middle management quality, managers act like feudal lords and silo themselves instead of working across divisions, rarely get penalized for bad business decisions, many of them do not understand basics of competitive analysis, how to retain employees meaningfully, how to build a mature and contented team
- Recent years trending towards very short term focus instead of 3 - 5 year look ahead and encouraging innovation, technical ladder is a valuable asset with excellent people that is losing credibility as it has become a tool in the hands of managers to promote their favorites and retain squeaky employees
- Frequent organization changes are a distraction to committed employees, the problem with having sales and marketing managers in charge is they tend to think of design resources as interchangeable and skill sets as transferable, these changes prevent engineers from having a long term deep focus that results in fantastic innovation
- If one does not have management mentors and supporters, the workplace can appear stagnant for one's career; can become worse if one manages to speak one's mind and upsets middle management
- Management too focused on tasks and end goals and does not listen to the staff on the ground very much; constantly experimenting due to lack of experience in org leadership and personal insecurities
