Maybe the directors at your particular company can code. But a lot of them really don't. They don't understand the technical aspects of the problem and this results in bad decisions.
I've had someone who drives expensive cars tell me to change a simple line based streaming text format to XML to "make networking more unified across the company projects". He suggested to add a 120 KLOC XML library that does memory allocations right and left to our <10K line embedded project with soft real time requirements.
To set the level of experience, that same person claimed in the same meeting that UDP wouldn't lose packets on a local connection. And when I didn't obey he played a power game.
The better a product is factored, the more all aspects of development are interdependent. Creating isolated work packages leads to a badly factored product with lots of duplication, creating bloat and bugs and preventing important features and optimizations. That's why sometimes, small teams of really smart hard working guys can be extremely productive in comparison.
That said, team size can be increased, while smartness and hard workingness of the team can generally not be increased, and a lot of tasks can also just be grinded through, or they need to be grinded through because there is no realistic way to avoid it.
I've had someone who drives expensive cars tell me to change a simple line based streaming text format to XML to "make networking more unified across the company projects". He suggested to add a 120 KLOC XML library that does memory allocations right and left to our <10K line embedded project with soft real time requirements.
To set the level of experience, that same person claimed in the same meeting that UDP wouldn't lose packets on a local connection. And when I didn't obey he played a power game.
The better a product is factored, the more all aspects of development are interdependent. Creating isolated work packages leads to a badly factored product with lots of duplication, creating bloat and bugs and preventing important features and optimizations. That's why sometimes, small teams of really smart hard working guys can be extremely productive in comparison.
That said, team size can be increased, while smartness and hard workingness of the team can generally not be increased, and a lot of tasks can also just be grinded through, or they need to be grinded through because there is no realistic way to avoid it.