It's well done, because it's almost impossible to prove.

Those of us who still care about system health and helping users just wait two years after they launch something, ask leadership for permission to delete it, and keep trying to build abstractions that reduce the harm misconduct has on our parts of the system.

The problem is they keep getting promoted because no one notices that almost nothing they've built is still in production.

A few of us have tried raising the issue to leadership but no one in leadership wants to know. It's a bit spooky. My current theory is that no one has the power to deal with it anymore, and at higher levels, launching garbage features that get deleted is actually desirable.

Theory: senior leadership keeps saying "drop what you're doing and build X". This group does that, but in a way that's half baked enough that we can kill it later. Middle management benefits because senior leadership is happy, and deleting it is fine because leadership forgot about it.

I wish I knew a way out.