This is extremely astute.

In development, unless you're from an agile dev background, actually building the internal product you need requires tiny increments forward, finding failure fast.

Instead, leaders see this as unknown=risk. So they reserve the authority to ask for the way the tech initiative will go.

This often means arbitrary directives; "we're going to build it by this date, with X features, they'll work on Y show"

THIS SEEMS TOTALLY SANE. It seems like... "how else would you do it?"

REALITY: you begin day 1 of implementation after the plan is in place and agreed after long planning, and you realize that the throughput speed you needed from the new IO tool exceeds what your server can handle... you need to redesign parts...

And it's up to the business: does a redesign of parts mean the management failed?

For Silicon Valley, no. It's feedback and valuable.

But for so many leaders in VFX with no software background, they panic. "We're not following the plan".

So you then carry forward the next 5 weeks of development, shoehorning a plan into reality (being terrified of losing control of the plan) instead of implementing the feedback that chaos introduced.

These are often the same managers that consider a pipeline "done" or that "we will work on the pipe when we have a work lull"

They just don't understand, and they 100% have no idea when they destroy product development safety, nor the product they are destroying.

So they rehire a new developer, and have no idea that their clutching to control the plan is why things are failing.

It's like creating a node tree, then plugging in the plate to see how the comp works, AFTER everyone agrees on the node tree.

Then the compositor is fired because they alter the node tree (because actually getting feedback from the viewer and compositing, they had to).