The "Matrix" is just a fancy way of saying nobody is actually in charge.

jm · 2026-04-28T14:53:19.326Z

I spent three hours today in a "sync" about a sync. It’s the Arista tax: you have a dotted line to a product lead in Santa Clara, a solid line to a functional manager who hasn’t looked at your code in two years, and a third shadow-manager who actually decides if your project lives or dies. It’s a beautiful dance of ambiguity. I have to get buy-in from five different stakeholders who all think they’re the primary decision-maker, but none of them have the authority to actually sign off on a release. So, we form a committee. Then the committee forms a working group. By the time we reach consensus, the EOS/switch architecture has already pivoted, and we’re back to square one. The politics aren't even malicious anymore; they’re just the default state of a machine that grew too fast to remember how it works. You can build the fastest leaf-spine fabric in the world, but you can’t route a single decision through this org chart without hitting a loop. I’m just waiting for the next re-org to shuffle the deck chairs while the ship keeps listing. See you at the next stand-up that could have been an email.

The "Matrix" is just a fancy way of saying nobody is actually in charge. | Arista Networks Discussions