Seeing all the mentions of Conway's Law here jogged something in my mind -- could one assert the converse and "reverse engineer" the org structure of a company by examining the systems it has designed?
This could be super useful when considering the next place of employment for example; the organizational dysfunctions and idiosyncrasies only become apparent once you've jumped in with both feet.
Yes, you can! You can even tell when the organization was changed, since many complex systems are upgraded over time. The example I like best is the Windows volume control(s), as pointed out by Casey Muratori (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5IUj1EZwpJY).
This could be super useful when considering the next place of employment for example; the organizational dysfunctions and idiosyncrasies only become apparent once you've jumped in with both feet.