sign of serious organizational disfunction.

You're not wrong, but it's a "dysfunction" that many successful tech companies have learned to leverage.

The reality is, most engineers spend far less than half their time writing new code. This is where the 80/20 principle comes into play. It's common for 80% of a company's revenue to come from 20% of its features. That core, revenue-generating code is often mature and requires more maintenance than new code. Its stability allows the company to afford what you call "dysfunction": having a large portion of engineers work on speculative features and "big bets" that might never see the light of day.

So, while it looks like a bug from a pure "coding hours" perspective, for many businesses, it's a strategic feature!