To expand on this, JPL probably has 100 Lisp engineers because it has intricate astrophysics problems that warrant 100 Lisp engineers. Most companies will neve

To expand on this, JPL probably has 100 Lisp engineers because it has intricate astrophysics problems that warrant 100 Lisp engineers. Most companies will never have such difficult problems. They may think they can, but they cannot. They can have crappy problems, however, and crappy problems can tie up those engineers provided they have very little agency in solving the underlying problems that give rise to those crappy problems. And you have to be careful to manage them very adversarially to keep it that way because they will totally try to actually fix things without your knowledge or permission. Not always, though, sometimes they get stuck in a mesh of very nerdy concepts and then there's no risk.