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October 31, 2026
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They mean that in order to get anything done, it has to go through 123986 different channels of approval. If you work at a smaller firm there is less people that need to look at something.
this plus the fact that everyone is narrow in responsibility so from an operations standpoint, it's difficult to identify who can help with a particular problem. an example, a few years back I had a relationship with a offshore hedge fund whose US HQ were nearby but the fund was in the Caymans (completely legal btw, for international/non profit investors). it took me more emails, phone calls, and shouting matches to get to the bottom of opening that thing than I care to remember. granted, some situations do require legwork no matter the size of the firm, but when you call a million other internal departments and get the sense no one wants to help you (even though you're technically coworkers), that's a bureaucracy.
for whatever it's worth, that was at my prior firm. current firm is much better, but I'm also not calling ops as much so that may have something to do with it.
I think it's firm based as well. One thing that helps with smaller firms is that it's easier to get a smaller firm to adopt new best practices, where as at a larger firm, it takes a lot more time having to go through all the channels that it's now not even a best practice anymore because it took so long.
I work in a firm with ~100 people, probably not even that many, and to get any one to do anything is like pulling teeth.
only 100 people? that's incredible you have bureaucracy at that level. I'm one of over 50,000 employees.
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