working for pretend companies

It's really sad that every once in a while I find out that I don't work for a real company, but one that pretends to be a company on the outside, yet acts like a bunch of high schoolers in the way it operates. I work in an environment that tries to act like a cohesive, national team, but that breaks down into groups of local resources who don't respond or work well with others from outside their office. Given that we're a major company with billions of dollars in assets and 10s of thousands of employees, that we act that way on a day-to-day basis is absolutely amazing.

What's got me ticked off today is that since I don't work in the HQ city, most of the promotable opportunities that might be available to me aren't. Not becaus I'm not qualified or couldn't do the job, but because I don't sit in the same office that the other people doing the job do or where the particular hiring manager does. What's really sad, though, is that the position I want is essentially the one I have now, but with a bigger team. Why is it that I can manage remotely located teams today, but couldn't in this new position?

Unfortunately, it's the environment that's the problem, not really the hiring manager. Historically, teams have been located together and in the same location with the other teams they'd interact with. It's only recently that resources in one location have had to report to or work with team members in other locations. And it's the old school managers, the ones that have been around for many years, that hold the view that you can't do your job unless you sit next to someone who does the same job right next to you. Nevermind that the job your doing it so manage a team of people located all over the place, which we apparently can't do unless we're located in some magic place that I'm not!

Yes, I'm very frustrated about this. I should have the same opportunities available to me as my coworkers in other cities do and should not be limited based on my location, especially for project related work where everyone else on the team is located in some other city. We need to grow up and become the national company that we are and quit enforcing working stereotypes that are out of date for the 21st century. Once we start expecting people to remotely manage more effective teamwork will ensue, but as long as we expect people to only be able to manage within a location, we will never become the cohesive organization we need to be in order to succeed as a company.