About 2 years ago I move from web/saas startups to a very large data company. It s been an unusual experience. I work in some cases with some very intelligent and qualified people, but somehow they don t seem to do a great job. My main observation is that people tackle problems head on, rather then let the technology guide them. Golden paths is a topic occasionally discussed, but I feel like no one I work with has really ever really experienced the benefits of following a golden path so has no ability to recognise when they are or are not following one. To me it feels like a bit of a self reinforcing problem across the industry. People are going to do their own things anyway, so those behind the tools don t focus on best practices and developer experience, so the golden paths aren t very golden so there is less incentive to follow them. I am wondering how much of this is down to working in a big org vs working in big data, or maybe the 2 things are tightly intertwined.