"it sounded like a massive bureaucracy"

Thats pretty much any large, or even medium companies, right?

Honestly, while some bureaucracy is inevitable, how oppressive it is can vary a lot. The last large multinational corp I worked for had a fairly horrific amount of it. The one I work for now (roughly the same size) has a tolerable amount of it.

It varies a lot from team to team in my company.

That makes sense. One of the jobs of team leaders and middle managers is to shield the team from as much BS as possible. Some people will be better, and some worse, at doing that.

Most of it here is a difference in the tech used and the nature of the business problem.

I think most companies as they grow will have people who are about to be redundant and then create layers of paperwork that need to be filled solely to justify their raison d'être.