My experience has been that the main product of most companies is management politics. Actually shipping product is nearly irrelevant to everyone's daily activities. In some cases, people get punished for being competent.

One company I worked with made it clear they had no interest in listening to competent people. People were promoted for their ability to suck up to management. They got promoted when the projects they managed were delayed, buggy, and generally non-functional. Any competent engineer was summarily drummed out of the company for causing trouble.