cto is a very wide title and in a global enterprise with hundreds of thousands of employees it's impossible to have a flat organization. There's probably 15 vp of engineering reporting to the cto. Each vp is going to have 10-20 directors reporting to them and beneath directors the fanout gets even wider. It does incentivize busy work and in a large org you can hide in the corner and be a potted plant for your whole career if you're smart enough to find it. But that is the nature of a large cooperation, I can't remember who said it but something like 80% of impact and progress to keep a business going is made by 20% of employees whether it's a big company or not. The rest are just sort of there playing along.

Depends on size of org. Many orgs end up too top heavy too quickly and don't have things in place to support that. That's where you get the "busy work." It's because they have too much time on their hands.