At the same time, I stand by my argument that there is often a great reason why you want to standardize. For example, do you want a cyclical dependency in your production stream. If there is a defect in your people movers, and you need those people movers to operate, you now have to split the newly produced people mover parts for fixing your production equipment vs getting them out to customers.

The point I am making isn't that IT is some bastion of brilliance and operational excellence. They're mediocre at it. And this is a good thing, not a bad thing.

As orgs scale, you want to be less nimble because any given success or failure is amplified. If a 10 person company screws up and goes out of business it sucks but it's not a big deal. 800 people? That's enough to get a presidential candidate to visit your campus to speak about the important of retaining jobs.

People underestimate the impact of the work we do in tech. Another thread on HN today pointed me to https://medium.com/better-marketing/pepsis-40-billion-typo-c... which I think is a great example. A simple software bug led to 18 million in loses, huge brand damage, and deaths of people involved in the protests.