Actually ....
This description is very much like what I imagined work life is like at Apple.
I know enough people who work for other big corporations (Xerox, Nestle, Enterprise, etc.) to say this sounds pretty typical.
Middle management, by and large, winds up in a role of "sucking up to senior management", in almost every case. I mean, basically, you've got a bunch of people who are getting paid well to pass along orders from the upper management and communicate summaries back to them about what and how their team is doing. If you're in that role and like your paycheck, why would you risk doing anything that jeopardizes that, as long as you know you can keep the salary coming by painting rosy pictures of your team's performance (thanks to your personal guidance and suggestions, of course)?
It's no wonder that small start-up type businesses wind up doing the lion's share of innovative things.... They haven't yet grown to the point where middle management has become a necessary evil for them.
As for Apple, in particular? I've LONG thought they need to employ more talented engineers and software developers. It seems to me they're perpetually in a mode of pushing their people to the limits, every time a new product launch is near and it turns into "crunch time" for them. That was probably part of a Steve Jobs core philosophy ... some sort of fuzzy idea that people produce their best work under pressure and constraints. But as a company, they can't ever seem to develop more than one product at a time. They lack the manpower. They had to borrow people from one team to help get another team's project completed on time (OS X people borrowed to get iOS done, for example).
Highly amusing video . .
I am an ex-Apple-employee one who has spent time at the manufacturing sites and with engineers. Many engineers will work on parts of products without know what the end product is - but even then it's not a given that said product will be released. So although it may seem to this guy that they work on "fake" products I very much doubt that is the case.
Time to burst a few bubbles, Apple internally has numerous issues and in general terms of staff treatment and expectation from staff Apple is an exceptional poor company to work for. Then there is the "perks" - well 25% discount on all products . . . but not the iPhone . . . unless you are in engineering roles where you need equipment for test/dev purposes general getting new/replacement equipment for business use is akin to getting blood out of a stone. Sure you stay at 5 star hotels whenever you travel however in general you'll only see that room to sleep as 14-16 hour days are pretty norm.
Middle management in general consists of men/women who have been there for excess of 5 years stuck in the rut (and sinking) but general watching there shares and treading on egg-shells and sucking up to the senior management. Rock the boat slightly and you'll be gone or isolated at the drop of hat.
Those who have been there for extended period of time (5 or so year) are basically seen as "trusted" over any newer employees regardless of competency levels! Frustration with these kind of people is very often why people leave and yes Apple does have a high churn rate.
In general the level political BS within Apple is extreme.
Before you all think this is just a bitter ex-employee rant, well the fact is I did actually enjoy my time with Apple however there was far too much swimming upstream and the need to be dodging knifes that were constantly trying to be stabbed in your back for my liking. I also do not like having my work passed off as other people and claiming it as their "work" by the incompetent "trusted" people.
