It sounds like this company doesn't have a competitive need to ship code changes, but when it does (i.e. a challenger appears or the moat disappears) it'll be t

It sounds like this company doesn't have a competitive need to ship code changes, but when it does (i.e. a challenger appears or the moat disappears) it'll be trouble. I've tried--with varying levels of success--to really take to heart that software engineering is a never ending battle against complexity. You have to do it all the time and it has to be your paramount value, otherwise stuff like this happens. I don't think there's an architecture or ideology that ends the war; this is just the nature of the job.