Internal competition can often be the most dangerous kind
One of my favorite books is Slack, and I have this quote highlighted: "There is no such thing as healthy competition within a knowledge organization; all internal competition is destructive."<p>One anecdote I faced once was talking to a senior engineer at a FAANG company who was complaining that he just discovered another organization building the identical product his team had spent over a year on, saying that management was so disorganized it must have not realized it. A couple weeks later I happened to talk to a VP up his chain of command, and mentioned this to him, and he chuckled and said "oh yeah that's by design, I'd rather have internal competition than external, it's worth the cost". Was a good reminder for me to avoid large companies.