There is an argument to be made that the busy work and good pay of megacorps is basically designed to keep talent in place that could otherwise run off and potentially make a competitor.
Want to get promoted as an engineer? Work on something BIG (even if no one asked for it). Want to get promoted as a manager? Get more people on your team (even if you don't need them). Want to get promoted as VP? Better re-org everything so people know you exist (even if re-orgs happen every year). And this problem gets compounded by the fact that the people who are best at playing this game end up making decisions that impact everyone else.
I often wonder if something can be done about this, or is it like a natural law when it comes to big corporations.
If only we had metrics to solve this!
Ambitious people who recognize the game will play it to advance their career regardless of how it might affect the long term prospect of the company or products.
Generally, a company culture that is more focused on delivering tangible value, and ability to recognize and fix behaviors that optimize for short term/career gaining behavior will succeed in keeping this in check. This gets much more difficult to do in larger companies and organizations though.
Maybe its some kind of "scale disease"; some natural law that will make larger companies incapable of innovation the bigger they get.