I've had a lot experience here and it's something that's bugged me quite a bit too. I've spent several years on this. The top comment right now mentions the se

I've had a lot experience here and it's something that's bugged me quite a bit too. I've spent several years on this. The top comment right now mentions the separation between the engineer and the people using the software. That's an excellent point, but in a way it's circular. The larger you are, by definition the more people there are in-between (or among) you and the folks you're trying to make happy. You can mitigate that somewhat, but more people means more interference. So in way, saying you're not close to the customer in big companies is restating the obvious. Big companies do badly because they're big. True, but maybe not so helpful. There's another good one: focus. Startups that scale quickly have laser-sharp focus on what value they're delivering. They can be so focused that they almost feel like a cult. Big, old companies might have been that way once, but they couldn't maintain it. Communication overhead is another one of the top comments. I think that's getting closer to it. Disclaimer: I have book about this. It's called "Info-Ops" https://leanpub.com/info-ops/ https://leanpub.com/info-ops/ Let me take all of these great comments and boil them down to the thesis of my book: just like we normalize databases to minimize storage and maximize efficiency, there's a minimum set of information complexity that any organization needs to function. (There may be tons of ancillary information not needed day-to-day, but relied on infrequently). In my experience, even in small teams, the communication noise and overhead is such that you quickly suffer from all three things: psychological distance from those you're helping, lack of focus on things that are important, and tons of communication overhead involving meetings, tools, and various things that doesn't seem to directly accomplish anything useful. In fact, this is a systemic problem. That means that good, intelligent people acting in good faith doing their jobs? Only makes things worse. So not only does the functioning of the organization get inefficient, the more people teach, meet, adopt practices, and other things to fix it? The worse it gets. There's a lot more, of course. But the thing to remember is that big organizations have everything they need to succeed. The information is all there. The people are all there. They have the time, tools, and money to immediately do a better job. (I think is one of the saddest parts about it.) It's the organization and flow of the information that gets quickly out of whack. They know what to do, they just can't get coordinated enough to do it. Sorry for the book plug. Happy to answer any questions you'd like that I'm able to. There's a lot, lot more.