Those given the greatest authority in the firm turn out to be the most powerless to effect positive change in the production process. The actual means by which decisions get made in the firm are a rats' nest of bypasses often held up by the force of will in singular individuals.

Many of these individuals (such as staff engineers) also have a crisis of meaningness when and if they realize their vast skills are essentially wasted being a glorified "glue stick" holding together a system which is perverse, and for no real purpose.

https://hbr.org/2019/12/can-you-know-too-much-about-your-organization
If you looked closely, would you see a deliberate strategy or the results of years and years of patches, workarounds, political truces, and shadow systems? They came to see peripheral roles, in which they stood apart from the complex system that required redesign, as a place from which they could add more fundamental and long-term value to the organization.

'Schlep Blindness'
http://paulgraham.com/schlep.html
A company is defined by the schleps it will undertake.

'Chesterton's fence' is the principle that reforms should not be made until the reasoning behind the existing state of affairs is understood.