I suspect the "self-important people like this" that trekkin is talking about are those who tell IT to "copy every program (and call) in the codebase, add 'Acme

I suspect the "self-important people like this" that trekkin is talking about are those who tell IT to "copy every program (and call) in the codebase, add 'Acme' to the front of all the names, and overwrite a clone of the present general data with Acme's data. Why can't this simple task be done by the end of the week, so I can 'deliver a business solution' to Acme next week?". This is just an extreme case I've seen of how the legacy code in many corporate IT depts consists of thousands of copies of the same basic code patterns.