Wow, my jaw just dropped open. Less that 25 people and 4 levels of management? How can you operate with that much bureaucracy in a small company? Very slowly, I'd imagine.

It also depends on what you are calling management. Is it someone who doesn't any actual work, or is it someone who tells you what to do in addition to doing their own work? Small companies tend to have a large number of the second group. Your IT may only have two people, but one is managing the other.

It's ended up that I treat my line manager as a normal co-worker who happens to sign off on my leave.

I go to his boss when I need to discuss technical implications of decisions I'm making for the products. Next layer up is more of a filter between the CEO and the company.

Who works on what comes down directly from CEO.

It's tons of fun.

Edit: my last salary review, 6 people were invited to it (including me).

all depends how involved each layer is. perhaps the top layer never even speaks to the other 3 more than a yearly meeting.

And how does the top layer make any decisions then, without being aware of what's happening in the company? If they only make decisions that can be made by participating in a single meeting per year, it doesn't really make any sense for that layer to exist at all. Continue recursively.

If there really are four layers of management in a company with 25 employees, that basically means each manager has zero, one or two subordinates. I really cannot see how that could work very well at all.

i was thinking ownership for a top layer, but that could be true for lower ones too. but i see your point, ownership and management are different things.