Guy had a very simple project

Yes I was going to say something similar because articles like this make it seem like a mysterious problem. In reality the reason this happens is because people want profit and the most profitable thing to do is unfortunately to drag a problem out. This literally happens even with individuals, you can give someone a task and he will try to explain to his teamlead that he has to research this all day even though he already knows the answer and he might do another hour on it. In general we have a problem that solving things quickly and permanently is not profitable for the individual/company.

You can use open ai to solve your LLM needs (if you legitimately have LLM needs) but an in house solution may be a whole lot more future proof, even if it’s more expensive up front

> Nothing to do with solving the problem efficiently. Unless you were solving world hunger or fast homomorphic encryption, this guy's promotable event sounds like it's way more impressive than whatever technical desiderata you were helping them to solve efficiently. Seriously, the guy sounds like some kind of corporate Robinhood.

I have seen similar forces at play in different organizations. I used to view them with disdain but at some point I had the idea that social and organizational engineering is also engineering and that wielding the system for one’s benefit is actually a skill. I am not good at it but I need to call mastery where I see it.

What’s old is new again: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rent-seeking We can change the language but human biology is tethered to meat space and has not evolved beyond the same old obfuscation. We raise functional illiterates who can only relate to the world through learned helplessness and pandering to supply side to solve their last mile problems. Large scale infra projects, internet, sure, I get that. Making every fruity drink and sandwich for us? Come on what is this, high school? This cultures economy is rooted in infantilizing Disney vibes. Mush some berries and strain them; assembly lines for drinks is a huge resource wasting low effort economic idea. Sell plain seltzer and let people figure it out. We’re way over industrialized and coddled to insulate brand investors. Pseudoreligious belief in unreal things to arbitrarily compute values from. None of this is divine mandate. Just…

I've noticed this much more with east coast companies than west coast companies. YMMV and take my anecdote for what it is.

That shouldn't really be surprising at all. And in some cases I'm not even sure it's a bad thing. Not sure what level of management/responsibility this guy was at, but if we wasn't executive level, he probably stands to personally benefit more from engaging in these sorts of shenanigans than if he were to do the thing that's best for the company. And really, in that situation, why should anyone feel ethically bound to be efficient and do what's best for the company? It's not like the company cares about you. If it's "efficient and best for the company" to kick you to the curb, the company will do that. Why should the rank-and-file show loyalty? The company executives almost certainly have it in their power to set incentives so doing the most efficient, best-for-the-company thing is what's going to give each employee the biggest reward. If they're not doing that, that's their problem. But…

I got invited to an enterprise architecture brainstorming session and they wanted to know my opinion about the multi-cloud, multi-repo, ETL-pipeline-driven reporting solution they had cooked up.. with two separate Kubernetes clusters included. I suggested that a column store index and a PowerBI report is literally all they needed. Didn't get invited to the next meeting, all further communications were silently ignored.