[Yashcheritsiy]

You’ll soon find that the wonderful ‘control’ comes with a hell of a lot of responsibility and stuff you’re really rather not be doing at all (like doing the government’s paperwork for them) and putting up with whiny employees.

Well, no. There's a definite difference between whining because you don't get to be the manager and sit behind a big desk, and having managers who consistently make bad decisions because they don't bother to pay attention to what their often-times more skilled and experienced employees are telling them.

[The Toll]

More skilled employees get the work done. Can’t let them move up. Then who will do the work? That’s been my experience from what I’ve seen.

[papertyger]

...and having managers who consistently make bad decisions because they don't bother to pay attention to what their often-times more skilled and experienced employees are telling them.

Precisely!

I work for a Koch subsidiary, and if our location's managers put as much effort into following the much ballyhooed "guiding principles" as they do making it LOOK like they're following them, Charles Koch would be King of the World.

As I said earlier, most professional managers are nothing but private sector bureaucrats who care about nothing but avoiding being scapegoated from above.

Their one big ace in the hole is they report to someone who is not on-site, and can therefore find sufficient scapegoats of their own to justify their failures, assuming a critical mass of their subordinates are at least somewhat diligent.