Comment by jiggawatts

Much more rarely in my experience, having been at both kinds of organisations.

There’s a sort-of “gradient descent” optimisation in private organisations, established by the profit motive and the competitors nipping at their heels. There’s no such gradient in government, it’s just “flat”. Promotions hence have a much weaker correlation with competence and a stronger correlation with nepotism, political skill, and willingness to participate in corruption.

I’ve worked with may senior leaders in all kinds of organisations, but only in government will you find someone who is functionally illiterate and innumerate in a position of significant power.

Obviously this is just a statistical bias, so there’s overlap and outliers. Large, established monopoly corporations can be nigh indistinguishable from a government agency.