So then it's not the 14 layers of management that the xbox CEO was talking about or even arranged in the chain you wrote up. That would be why I said your example makes no sense. The junior dev and dev wouldn't even be "layers of management"The QA guy didn't answer to me, we just worked together on the "found bug, fixed it, checked it, yup it's fixed, nice" loop. So that's QA tester, QA manager, developers (junior and senior), team lead and then department head, and though it amounted to six "ranks" on the org chart if you viewed it that way, it ran a lot smoother than it sounds.