I was more levels from the CEO at Microsoft (up to Ballmer) than I was as a lowly intern working for the US government at NIST (up to . . . well, Reagan at the time).

I could see value up to about three levels above me, and maybe a couple at the top, but those three or four middle layers were pretty confusing. We had director-level and partner-level people do flybys of our engineering groups, saying things like "We'll see each other every few weeks, you're doing great stuff!" and then vanish for six months, a year, or forever. They never seemed to do anything that mattered.

I work in a flat organization now. Not necessarily better, but there's a whole lot less dead wood, avoidance by delegation, and simple quit-in-place behavior.