Yes. We seem to be trying so hard these days to make our organisational structures appear flat and informal (e.g. open plan office spaces, casual dress policies, "360 degree reviews" and an aversion to using job titles) that I feel it's just pushed the competition for status and respect underground. The people who've been around for a long time simply find other ways to show newcomers that they're important or that they should be listened to. Things like camping out in one of the meeting rooms "because I have a lot of import calls to make". Or wearing something just slightly smarter than everyone else. Or a kind of faux humility like ScottGu's sub-title on his blog: http://weblogs.asp.net/scottgu/. Or coming to work in their 1998 "version 1.0 shipping date" T-shirt.

I've recently starting to think that people have a fundamental need for hierarchy and what you might call "respect structures" and that if you deny them the job titles and corner offices then they just find other ways of projecting their status. In a way, I'd prefer the overt methods - so long as there's a route to getting there myself someday.