tl;dr: Successful companies develop "competence blindness" like Mexican cavefish that lose their sight in caves: when market barriers protect incumbents, careful engineering becomes a vestigial trait, and employees who only know the internal culture perpetuate it through hiring. Attempts to fix this via "centres of excellence" actually suppress distributed excellence by centralizing it into bureaucratic process shops. Sighted engineers who join either leave quickly or gradually adapt to the dysfunction—making staying a form of apoptosis rather than loyalty.