> Today I find it ridiculous that a major corporation would allow huge groups to silo to this degree, to fail to communicate, cooperate, and share, and to allow them to build overlapping and competing products. To allow this kind of animosity to build between employees of the same company. We’re talking about thousands of engineers involved here, between the two divisions. Seems like something that could have only happened in the crazy 1980’s, but I am betting if enough people read this far, we will see comments to the contrary.
This happens very regularly and it is to the detriment of both the company and employees. I'll take the tech giants as an example, although this probably applies to other enormous organizations as well. Google displays this internal competition in one way, with a scattered, inconsistent, and ever-changing strategy for products like Chat that many on HN have joked is caused by promotion-driven engineering and cut-throat focus on personal gain. Amazon allows multiple teams to go after the same opportunities, with the mentality that it is better to have two horses in the race. Microsoft had inter-org competitive dynamics throughout the 2000s that was captured in the famous organizational chart of tech companies (https://www.businessinsider.com/big-tech-org-charts-2011-6) - although that culture may have changed under Satya Nadella's leadership.
Large companies are less like small businesses and more like small countries or governments. So naturally, politics arises - but companies are new to it and do a bad job of dealing with political dynamics. So when they allow internal competition, they don't even manage to create a "fair" playing field. More typically, there might one team that is chosen to be the "survivor" by an arbitrary executive decision, or there might be a part of the company with more resources that out-paces the others, or the company may just make effectively random choices, or whatever else. This can leave talented teams and employees jaded, frustrated, and burned out. It can also create immense distrust that those affected carry forward with them into subsequent jobs or their personal life. As for the products and the company - the best ideas don't necessarily survive this, and the loss of talent eventually accumulates towards the fall of a big company from its peaks.