> When I was at Google it amazed me how many pieces of infrastructure were 'hot messes' in the sense that the people maintaining them didn't really know anythin

> When I was at Google it amazed me how many pieces of infrastructure were 'hot messes' in the sense that the people maintaining them didn't really know anything about how they worked, just how to run a test and revert if they broke. But there was no senior leadership pushing to understand the component interfaces and how the 'fleet' was at risk or interconnected. Just a bunch of fiefdoms. And inevitably people who kept things complicated so that they were "irreplaceable" for their own job security anxieties. This is the curse of a large bureaucracy. It seemed like Google was immune to this for a while, perhaps due to the engineering culture, but it's only a matter of time when there's enough money and organizational inertia at play. Once things reach a boiling point, the transformational programs pop up, and the cycle continues.