SEEING LIKE A SOFTWARE COMPANY

Summary from the TLDR Dev newsletter

Large software companies prioritize legibility (measurability and predictability) over efficiency. While small companies can thrive with illegible, engineer-driven work, large companies require legibility for planning, enterprise deals, and coordination, even if it slows down individual engineers. To balance this, companies create temporary "zones of illegibility" for urgent problems and rely on informal backchannels.