I've only worked very briefly in the CMS collaboration, but I've spent a lot of time with people in particle physics collaborations and at medium/large companie

I've only worked very briefly in the CMS collaboration, but I've spent a lot of time with people in particle physics collaborations and at medium/large companies. My impression has always been that particle physics collaborations are very well managed for their size, among the best managed human organizations Earth, but that obviously there are friction in getting 3k extremely ambitious scientists to agree on this. For instance, the "frequent complaints that Higgs analyses had too much manpower" may be valid, but they're not really an example of organizational disfunction unless you had some objective reason to think they were making the wrong decision. Folks disagree about things whether they are inside organizations or not, and if those things are important the disagreement may be venomous. Likewise, the lengthy review process is painful and exhausting, but my impression from almost everyone is that it is sound -- comes to the right conclusions -- and that the conservatism is justified by the field's history of purported discoveries that were later retracted. This soundness is even more impressive when compared to the frequent complaints about the capricious nature of the refereeing process at regular journals, which involves just a handful of physicists. (This is to be compared to physics collaborations outside HEP, like Planck, which are often said to be more dysfunctional.) So I guess I'm wondering if you could say more comparing ATLAS to similar organizations? "The lack of clear assignment of responsibilities" could certainly be a good criticism, and one that I would actually prefer to apply to physics as a whole. The major rewards are fame and esteem, rather than money, so everyone chases the sexiest, most highly visible tasks.