it works fine as long as everyone is extremely reasonable, and everyone's primary motivation is the success of the project. unfortunately, this is very unlikel

it works fine as long as everyone is extremely reasonable, and everyone's primary motivation is the success of the project. unfortunately, this is very unlikely to be true. and increasingly less so as the team size increases. one confounding factor here is the heavy use of religion to guide technical decisions. the decisions we make now about the direction of the product and the attributes of the codebase are largely subjective. there are arguments on all sides of a position. a good team, properly enculturated, understands the process. when the issue is important enough to justify digging in and when its just a personal bias. a good team helps all of its members stay on the path and not end up in giant ratholes. a good team uses its experience to inform future decisions rather than create artificial strictures. a good team has enough time and maturity to interact constructively with the rest of the business and the customers. I shouldn't say 'good' team, I should say 'perfect' good management greases all of these points of potential friction. but I think at the end of the day management is there to address the last point. its natural and expected for engineers to keep a narrow focus on the technical aspects of the project itself. someone's got to make sure its evolving in a direction that's meaningful in an external context.