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This law took several years to understand for me. Early on, I'd come into an infra situation and kind of incredulously say stuff like "Why not do (incredibly obvious thing)?" and be frustrated by it quite often.

Usually it's not because people think it can't be done, or shouldn't be done, it's because of this law. Like yes in an ideal world we'd do xyz, but department head of product A is a complete anti-productive bozo that no one wants to talk to or deal with, so we'll engineer around him kind of a thing. It's incredibly common once you see it play out you'll see it everywhere.



> no one wants to talk to or deal with, so we'll engineer around him

Sometimes, forking product lines, departments or budgets.




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