For example, you're young and both want to solve problems and make an impression. You've heard and read comments and advice about "initiative".

But, it turns our that your own immediate management is heavily invested in the "status quo". A few things may happen:

1) They outright don't understand your initiative, even in the face of the proof of the model you may have up and running. "That can't work." "No one will want it." "Why would you do that?" It can be rather disheartening to invest yourself in such work, only to be criticized for "wasting" your time, resources, etc. You can literally show someone that it works as you describe, with all the affected parties liking it, and still be shot down.

More likely, you may have some good ideas for improvements, but not the actual implementations. When you suggest these, you get a similar reaction.

2) They feel threatened by your work. They've cornered their own little domain within the organization, and your improvements threaten that model. If all the reporting becomes electronic, how will the reporting managers justify their headcount, or their own position? Maybe the organization would find value in the transition; however, your interface to the organization is a manager who sees this innovation as a threat.

3) You know of a better tool, but you "can't use it". Your management has decided on [crap product] from [other big co.] and you will use it. You spend 8 hours doing what should take you 4, or less. Your management does not care. (All the more so if they signed off on [$big-budget] for [crap product].) If you are lucky, you may be able to install or develop and use an alternative "unofficially". Management becomes a mockery as the effective people count such "under the radar" workarounds as some of their larger successes. (At least this scenario allows for individual initiative.)

4) You are forced to make decisions that you feel compromise your own ethics. E.g. the compensation system is not tallying credit correctly. You could fix it, but you are told this is "not a priority". You know people are not being compensated correctly -- albeit within rules that are in practice already interpreted loosely and somewhat at management's discretion -- but your management is telling you to ignore this.

5) You see co-workers slacking for hours each day. In brief, "social" results win over actual productive results, in your corner of the organization. Perhaps adding to this, you see other areas of the organization struggling to make up for this deficiency. But the reporting structure keeps your area isolated from these downstream effects.

Spend a few years under these conditions, and you can become very cynical. The only real solution is to get out. (Some people successfully climb in the organization; others leave.) But if you start to see the world in these terms, the job hunt itself can become difficult to engage in.

I guess a quippy way to sum it up is, "You are what you eat." And that includes your work.

From others' experiences, I gather not all Big Co. environments are this way. Often, it seems in good part a matter of which team you are on -- which domain within the larger organization. But, the Dilbert cartoon strip has been successful for a reason.