> You couldn’t use GitHub, Slack, or even our cloud platform without first learning how to navigate all of the custom tools and bots that had been put together

> You couldn’t use GitHub, Slack, or even our cloud platform without first learning how to navigate all of the custom tools and bots that had been put together to gate access to everything and make it work. First time in a really big org and I can see this as well. The worst part is trying to tie someone down to explain how to use their custom tool or bot or even entire systems. How do I use that custom BI tool that you setup ... oh no-one wants to even send me an email reply when I ask a simple question about these things. The way most stuff gets done in these orgs is various maverick people who find some way to work around all this crap. The problem is you have to have political clout to do that most employees don't have that. I think these "meta-tool" are initially well intentioned but as you say they become empire building tools. Worst still is that the teams that build them often leave or are disbanded. Then no one is responsible and no one wants to touch them and they sit in this weird limbo state.