One thing I found immensely frustrating was that occasionally other projects at Intel (not mentioning names) would wind up completely fucking up by, say, building the wrong thing, then they would do some heroic 8-week "save" of the mess that they made, and wind up getting Major Corporate Recognitions.

A bodgy, high-touch system that required endless customization and lots of meetings would become a high profile project that could ultimately get the corporate equivalent of high fives all around. Meanwhile, if you ship a library that Just Works, people quietly link it into their product and move on with their lives.