But if you have a sucky manager, you are in trouble no matter which company you're at.
This is sadly true only most of the time. Occasionally companies are organized so that a bad manager affects his people very little before everyone realizes they are a bad manager and gets rid of them.
Sadly not every company is striving for that kind of organization.
Yea I'd agree the ideal is to get rid of sucky managers before they can crush too many people's careers. Microsoft isn't so good at actively firing bad people though, and that probably compounds the injustices of the stack rank system.
This is sadly true only most of the time. Occasionally companies are organized so that a bad manager affects his people very little before everyone realizes they are a bad manager and gets rid of them.
Sadly not every company is striving for that kind of organization.