One thing I have observed about software and organizations is that big, intractable problems in code are often rooted in big, intractable problems in the organization that produced it. If you look at a codebase and find that choices in one half are half-incompatible with the choices in the other, the likely explanation is that the organization itself has factions, each of which insists on doing things its own way, and management can't or won't step in to resolve the deadlock.

In short, working for dysfunctional organizations means all your time as a programmer is spent catering to the dysfunction.

Now, is it possible for an organization to be functional when all its priorities have been set by congress? Or the president? This president? Or worse, whose priorities have been set by this president and the congress that is diametrically opposed to him?

Count me out.