The project sizes are fine. The team sizes are too large.
There's too much empire building and career-minded politicking going on in companies of this size, which gets in the way of actually working on the product. Managers increase scope to increase their budget, then do busy make-work to justify the budget so they can get more next round. The engineers need to look busy even though things aren't defined, and optimize to internal-facing metrics as opposed to product-oriented productivity. Anybody who steps back and mentions that progress isn't being made towards actually getting the customer a working product is reprimanded as undermining the unquestionably accepted established processes (which usually aren't working anyway).
The actual deliverable gets lost in the shuffle, as the lumbering hulk of the company and career paths within it overshadow the customer.
This is the correct answer. I saw it first hand how PM and engineers don't care about the product, they just care about their careers and company internal metrics.
There's too much empire building and career-minded politicking going on in companies of this size, which gets in the way of actually working on the product. Managers increase scope to increase their budget, then do busy make-work to justify the budget so they can get more next round. The engineers need to look busy even though things aren't defined, and optimize to internal-facing metrics as opposed to product-oriented productivity. Anybody who steps back and mentions that progress isn't being made towards actually getting the customer a working product is reprimanded as undermining the unquestionably accepted established processes (which usually aren't working anyway).
The actual deliverable gets lost in the shuffle, as the lumbering hulk of the company and career paths within it overshadow the customer.