None of what I witnessed going on there was technically illegal. It's not actual graft, it's just incompetence combined with a highly diluted sense of responsibility.
There's also a sort of "rocket equation" to bureaucracy where additional staff begets more staff. Or overheads beget more overheads to deal with the overheads. And just like how with rockets the key thing is to have a fuel with good specific power, scaling an org depends very heavily (nonlinearly!) on the efficiency of each person. Conversely, if you have inefficient, incompetent, and unmotivated staff but try to scale up, the inevitable consequence is that you end up in an exponential cycle of compounding inefficiency without limit.
At this place I could not get a single VM deployed to PRD despite three months of focused effort. It just could not be done!
Hence the comments about the hilarious 90 day sprints. Well... yes. That's the fastest pace at which they could possibly move! Some manager probably patted himself on the back for a job well done! That's an "agile" project relative to the multi-year monstrosities they normally give birth to in that place...
There's also a sort of "rocket equation" to bureaucracy where additional staff begets more staff. Or overheads beget more overheads to deal with the overheads. And just like how with rockets the key thing is to have a fuel with good specific power, scaling an org depends very heavily (nonlinearly!) on the efficiency of each person. Conversely, if you have inefficient, incompetent, and unmotivated staff but try to scale up, the inevitable consequence is that you end up in an exponential cycle of compounding inefficiency without limit.
At this place I could not get a single VM deployed to PRD despite three months of focused effort. It just could not be done!
Hence the comments about the hilarious 90 day sprints. Well... yes. That's the fastest pace at which they could possibly move! Some manager probably patted himself on the back for a job well done! That's an "agile" project relative to the multi-year monstrosities they normally give birth to in that place...