I agree with some of this. But this example I don't completely agree with: > There was no one in a position to see that Team A and Team D were both solving pr

I agree with some of this. But this example I don't completely agree with: > There was no one in a position to see that Team A and Team D were both solving problem theta, and that Team D's solution was better, and Team A should just use Team D's (or, more often, that we needed to detail an engineer to solve problem theta fully and get both teams to use that full solution rather than the jury-rig that each team had built) I've seen it many times that forcing teams to use the same solution doesn't work as imagined. Often times, teams are solving similar problems. But similarity isn't grounds enough to merge a solution imo. A programming analogy is DRY. Everyone has seen what happens when you take DRY too far. Some level of management and bureaucracy is necessary. But I think nearly every single company that's ever existed, takes this too far. There are far fewer examples of companies that under manage. I'd argue that all else being equal, under management has less downsides than over management. The reason we don't see companies with too few managers is because of individual interests. Basically, imagine that a company has the perfectly correct number of managers (contrived example for sake of argument). Then imagine that you can choose to either add or a subtract exactly 1 manager. I am willing to bet that in the vast majority of cases, subtracting the manager leaves the company better off than adding one.