In a product focused organization, where the users the front end serves are the paying customers (or at least, the dominant stakeholders) this would be a stable

In a product focused organization, where the users the front end serves are the paying customers (or at least, the dominant stakeholders) this would be a stable arrangement. In small orgs where this is the case you tend to find combined teams. In many orgs however, money (and other forms of power, such as regulatory constraints) doesn't flow from the end users, but from other stakeholders (advertisers, for example, or large enterprise purchasers). Conway's Law[0] applies ("Organizations, who design systems, are constrained to produce designs which are copies of the communication structures of these organizations."), and the organizations being copied often mimic cash flows (eg. classifying parts of the org as revenue vs cost centers). [0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conway%27s_law https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conway%27s_law