> Direct engineer -> engineer communication between teams is O(N^2) to organize things between N engineers. This isn't true in my experience. I'd say it's more

> Direct engineer -> engineer communication between teams is O(N^2) to organize things between N engineers. This isn't true in my experience. I'd say it's more like a binary search than a fully-connected network. I talk to my immediate team first. If they can't help, I dig through the company-wide documentation and codebase, then message people who have done or considered something similar to what I'm trying to do; they either give me the information I need, or direct me to someone more likely to have it. Each hop gets me closer to an answer, and I typically end up having to talk to 1-3 engineers rather than the O(500) who work in my organization. Part of the reason this works is because there are a handful of very senior engineers who have a good sense of what's going on across a big part of the company. Complex requests often get routed through one of these people, and they always seem to know who to talk to. I guess that's a form of hierarchy, but without the "command-and-control" aspect. I see it as an occasional escape hatch rather than a primary means of problem-solving.