> high priest gatekeepers

I like that! I'll be adding that to my back pocket for an appropriate conversation in the future.

I've absolutely experienced this, and, to a degree, I'm dealing with it now in supporting a huge enterprise platform that's a few decades old.

The really interesting (frustrating?) piece is that the "high priest gatekeepers" are on both sides of the equation - the people who have used the system for years and know the appropriate incantations and the people who have developed it for years and understand the convoluted systems on the backend.

This dynamic (along with other things, because organizations are complex) has led to a very bureaucratic organization that could be far more efficient.