Successful Companies Go Blind

# Summary Successful companies often develop "competence blindness"—they lose the ability to recognize quality engineering and best practices because rapid growth leads them to hire for cultural fit rather than competence, creating a workforce with no external frame of reference. Like Mexican cavefish that lose their eyes in cave environments where sight isn't needed, companies in their own "caves" of success stop valuing and expressing careful engineering practices, causing talented engineers with outside experience to either conform or leave. Though these companies may appear financially healthy on the surface, their technical foundations deteriorate as rigorous engineering becomes a suppressed, unrewarded trait.