> skip managers/directors who I’m almost certain are barely working and just milking out huge salaries while hiding behind their remote status

Sounds like you're describing Amazon, at least it's very clear this was the case when I worked there, and it contrasted with several happy healthy years engineering in a core group at Apple, which was exactly the opposite description, partly because of keeping hierarchies very shallow, so everyone was involved in real work, not posing as valuable.

A few years after quitting to work on cancer research at a startup which soon failed, i found Amazon's 13 or whatever levels to be a complete joke, and didn't need to put up with the corrupt bureaucracy, so left.