This reminds me of a situation which I'll label "satellite office syndrome" - which is where a company has a large/dominant Head Office, and smaller regional offices which are in a permanent state of playing second-fiddle in terms of funding, attention, respect and company culture.
This is as true with products as with locations. For example, the people doing S3 at Amazon get everything they need, because that is a blockbuster product...and the people doing, oh I dont know, Greengrass IoT are waayyy down the totem pole even though it might be a perfectly profitable product.
Large orgs tend to have a Roman Empire feel to them for most of the people, most of the time. You're stuck out on the edge of the empire, minding Hadrian's Wall, proud to be a Roman but also far, far away from any influence over or interest from the Emperor. If you are lucky they leave you alone. Occasionally a missive arrives from Rome that you have to decipher and implement no matter whether it makes sense or not. Fun times.
I thought that metaphor would go in a different direction, tbh. I was thinking “praetorian guards”, “imperial decline”, “decadence”, “barbariand resettling inside the limes” etc.
