There is a big Austrian company, let's call it "Big". It had a software servicing daughter, let's call it "Big-Soft". Both had branches in Hungary (Big/H and Big-Soft/H). The boss of Big-Soft/H was whom I shall call "Carla".

Troubles started with a guy in Big, "Mr. Black", who had some crappy software development of his own. So Big-Soft was in his way. But Mr. Black could gain power: he gained the trust of a higher-up, a yuppie. Mr. Black supplied the yuppie with loads of silly advices that both made life for Big-Soft difficult and cost Big a lot of money. Carla too had a lot of battles with Mr. Black. She couldn't rely on her higher-up, who followed and proclaimed the philosophy that "do evewrything you're ordered, then you don't get into trouble", but the Austrian co-boss of Big/H was like-minded.

One of Mr. Black's ideas was to induce a switch in the operating system of intranet servers from a superior product to Windows NT. He succeeded in forcing Big-Soft/A to do it. But the programmers of Big-Soft/H said that that's insane, and Carla stood by her men and their arguments.

But at this point, the Hungarian co-boss of Big/H saw his chance for a wily move. He got his Austrian co-boss to jump ship (probably with blackmail about his alcohol problem), then, pointing at the tussle with Mr. Black, he said to the yuppie higher-up that Carla is a troublemaker and Big-Soft/H got too far away from the core business. Thus he got approval to absorb Big-Soft/H into Big/H (which lost a lot of business in the process), with Carla losing her job.

Half a year later, the even more wily yuppie fired Mr. Black. Another half a year later, the yuppie rose even higher, and when the Hungarian co-boss of Big/H came to talk about the extension of his contract, he was told he won't get it and is not allowed to step into his own bureau again.

The moral of the story for me: every large company can be inefficient, silly power plays are a trait of hierarchies, not public vs. private companies.

_{*Lunatic*, n.
One whose delusions are out of fashion.}