True story. Similar start. A couple of enterprise customers, kludgy old code. Changeability was the problem. Decision made for total rewrite. Budget no probs, team of 10 allocated. I was the guy who sold the deals. Wanted to assess if we had a disaster on our hands. Asked CTO to explain how team was constructed. Here is how the conversation went:<p>Me: tell me about the team<p>CTO: well it is actually all being built by two guys.<p>Me: That&#x27;s crazy. We have a 10 person team.<p>CTO: Actually I lied, it is actually all being built by one guy. Before you get me fired, let me explain. One guy just builds prototypes to keep all those idiotic requests from management.<p>Me: I knew the guy. Fastest damn developer on the planet<p>CTO: we just throw his code away. The other guy who we don&#x27;t let you meet actually writes the code that works. You see nothing for weeks, then it emerges and works beautifully.<p>Me:  what do you do with the other 8 guys?<p>CTO: give them make work to keep them out of the way.<p>The system was a market success for a long time.