One thing that’s interesting today is how in the corporate world, even in big tech companies where one might naively think black triangles with explanations might be appreciated by more technically literate managers, working on these sorts of building blocks for big wins will often actually result in projects and teams getting axed. I’ve seen serious attempts at innovation get thrown out the window a number of times in favor of shiny demo projects that demo well but can never go much further. Black triangle projects require time investments that at least big companies only rarely bet on despite being in possibly the best position to do so.<p>I think a part of it is that humans, or at least those that make their way into management, are in large part very visual creatures. If you can’t show them progress in a traditional visual way you sort of have to figure out some contortion to show some visual thing to use as a proxy of progress to keep the faith. Sometimes it can be achieved through selling some abstract progress metrics about work remaining (most often entirely detached from reality) but that only works so long.<p>More often you end up knowingly spending a large percentage of resources on vacuous side projects solely because they demo well to management in the short term — it’s a distraction but a way to keep the faith and the resources. I find it funny how much time and energy we’re willing to waste to play the game — paying the souped up visual taxes for decision makers, while doing the real work independently, often in the dark because we know management will react short sightedly to the black triangles.