Successful Companies Go Blind

成功的公司为何会“失明”

9 July 2026 • Ian Reppel • 4 min 2026年7月9日 • Ian Reppel • 4分钟阅读

The Mexican cavefish kept its eye genes for over a million years after the eyes themselves disappeared. Something similar happens to companies once they achieve success. 墨西哥洞穴鱼在眼睛消失一百多万年后，依然保留着它们的眼部基因。当公司取得成功后，也会发生类似的情况。

The cave is the variable

洞穴是变量

The Mexican cavefish (Astyanax mexicanus) exists in two forms only kilometres apart. In the rivers along the Sierra del Abra, the fish has eyes and behaves the way ordinary fish behave. In the limestone caves under the same mountains, members of the same species are blind, depigmented, and translucent. The genome is virtually identical. 墨西哥洞穴鱼（Astyanax mexicanus）在相隔仅几公里的地方以两种形态存在。在塞拉德尔阿布拉（Sierra del Abra）沿线的河流中，这种鱼有眼睛，行为与普通鱼类无异。而在同一山脉下的石灰岩洞穴中，同物种的成员却是失明、无色素且半透明的。它们的基因组几乎完全相同。

Within hours of fertilization in cave conditions, the lens-building programme triggers early apoptosis (i.e. programmed cell death), and the energy that would have gone to optic tissue is redirected to traits the cave actually rewards: better olfaction, deeper feeding, and fat reserves against the next lean year. Sight is no longer expressed. The same fish, hatched in the river, would see. 在洞穴环境的受精卵发育数小时内，构建晶状体的程序会触发早期细胞凋亡（即程序性细胞死亡），原本用于视力组织的能量被重新分配给洞穴环境真正奖励的特征：更敏锐的嗅觉、更深层的觅食能力，以及为应对饥荒年份储备的脂肪。视力不再表达。而同样的鱼如果在河流中孵化，则会拥有视力。

Competence blindness

能力失明

Companies who have forgotten what it took to become successful are similar: they stop recognizing competence, because the environment has stopped expressing the trait in anyone the company hires. Call it competence blindness, which is different from incumbents who fail because they cling to the customers and margins of yesterday’s market. Firms with competence blindness do not disappear. In fact, they can survive for decades. 那些忘记了成功之道的公司与之类似：它们不再能识别出“能力”，因为公司招聘的任何人都无法在当前的环境中展现出这种特质。这可以称为“能力失明”。这与那些因固守昨日市场客户和利润而失败的在位者不同。患有“能力失明”的公司并不会消失。事实上，它们可以存活数十年。

When a startup hits rapid growth, it hires at speed. Headcount targets bend the bar until the bar disappears altogether. Engineers who have never worked elsewhere learn the house style, and within a year find themselves on hiring panels. They select for comfort with the prevailing mess, because they have no other frame of reference. After a few cycles the company has a population of well-meaning people who do not suspect anything is off. They have only ever known the cave, and life inside the cave is good. 当一家初创公司进入快速增长期时，会进行高速招聘。人数目标会不断拉低招聘门槛，直到门槛完全消失。从未在别处工作过的工程师学会了“公司风格”，一年内就进入了面试小组。他们倾向于选择那些能适应现有混乱状况的人，因为他们没有其他的参照系。经过几轮循环后，公司里充斥着一群好心但并未察觉异样的人。他们只见过洞穴，而洞穴里的生活还不错。

The view from outside is encouraging: strong brand, decent margins, headcount up. From within, the view is not so flattering. Build pipelines only the original author can run, deployments so fragile that they require a senior engineer to be on call at all times, and a wiki so out of date it might as well be written in hieroglyphics. Because the company’s numbers still look fine, leadership believes the foundations are sound. 从外部看，情况令人鼓舞：品牌强大、利润尚可、人数增加。但从内部看，景象却不那么乐观。构建流水线只有原作者能运行，部署过程脆弱到需要高级工程师随时待命，维基文档过时到如同用象形文字书写。由于公司的财务数据看起来依然不错，领导层便认为根基稳固。

In this climate, careful engineering becomes a vestigial trait: the capacity exists, but the expression has been suppressed by an environment that does not return the energy spent on it. An engineer who insists on expressing the trait is investing in an organ the cave will not feed. After the first round of overruled proposals, the apoptosis begins. 在这种环境下，严谨的工程实践成了退化特征：能力依然存在，但由于环境不会对投入的精力给予回报，这种表达被抑制了。坚持展现这种特质的工程师，就像是在投资一个洞穴环境无法供养的器官。在第一轮提案被否决后，细胞凋亡就开始了。

Arrive with sight and the problems are immediately visible. You propose something the wider industry has already moved past, and you are told the suggestion is over-engineered, academic, and not aligned with priorities. What you intended as overdue maintenance reads as an attack on the identity of the engineers who stapled together the existing infrastructure. 带着“视力”入职，问题会立刻显现。你提出一些行业早已跨越的改进方案，却被告知这属于“过度设计”、“学院派”，且“不符合优先级”。你本意是进行迟来的维护，却被解读为对那些拼凑出现有基础设施的工程师身份的攻击。

Centres of excellence

卓越中心

The response is predictable: the company assembles a centre of excellence. Due to the centre’s obsession with control, intrinsic motivation atrophies until the people doing the work feel that none of it is theirs anymore. In healthy companies, excellence is ambient and distributed. In cave dwellers, it is extracted into a process shop, charged with writing the standards, enforcing the templates, and running mandatory rituals. The centre is designed to suppress the very trait its name claims to cultivate. 应对措施是可以预见的：公司组建了一个“卓越中心”。由于该中心对控制权的痴迷，员工的内在动力逐渐萎缩，直到他们觉得手头的工作与自己毫无关系。在健康的公司中，卓越是无处不在且分布式的。而在“洞穴居民”公司中，卓越被提取到一个流程部门，负责制定标准、强制执行模板并运行强制性的仪式。这个中心的设计初衷，恰恰是抑制其名称所宣称要培养的特质。

The cave is geologically stable

洞穴在地质上是稳定的

When a market’s barriers to entry are prohibitive, incumbents can accumulate bureaucracy and tolerate waste, because no credible entrant forces discipline. The cave is geologically stable, so they do not need to grow new eyes. That is how self-proclaimed technology companies end up sounding like the tech giants on the conference stage yet ship like regional utilities from the nineties. 当市场准入门槛极高时，在位者可以堆积官僚主义并容忍浪费，因为没有可靠的竞争者来强迫它们保持纪律。洞穴在地质上是稳定的，所以它们不需要长出新眼睛。这就是为什么那些自称科技公司的企业，在会议舞台上听起来像科技巨头，交付的产品却像九十年代的区域性公用事业公司。

Brand and cash still attract a steady supply of sighted engineers. They arrive, realize the place is running on stored fat from earlier seasons, and feel their skills regressing in the dark. Some leave within a year, for they refuse to go blind. Management explains the exits in terms of generational fickleness, culture fit, the labour market, anything but the obvious. The ones who stay are comfortable. The work is predictable, the salary adequate, the internal game familiar, and the politics rewarding to whoever learns to play the game. Over time the comfort switches off their sight. What remains is fluency in cave rules and a steadily diminishing ability to imagine themselves outside. 品牌和现金依然吸引着源源不断的“有视力”的工程师。他们入职后，意识到公司是在消耗早期的积蓄，并感到自己的技能在黑暗中退化。有些人一年内就离开了，因为他们拒绝失明。管理层将员工离职归咎于代际浮躁、文化契合度、劳动力市场等各种原因，唯独不承认显而易见的事实。留下来的人感到舒适。工作是可预测的，薪水是充足的，内部游戏是熟悉的，政治斗争对那些学会玩游戏的人来说是有回报的。久而久之，这种舒适感关闭了他们的视力。剩下的只有对洞穴规则的熟练掌握，以及想象自己身处洞穴之外的能力在不断减弱。

Staying as apoptosis

留下来即是凋亡

The conventional story about smart people in dysfunctional companies treats staying as acquiescence. Hirschman gave us three options (exit, voice, loyalty), and they remain accurate. The cavefish analogy adds a fourth: the people who stay adapt to the cave’s pressures, mostly outside their awareness, until the adaptation is indistinguishable from loyalty. Staying is apoptosis. 关于聪明人在功能失调公司中留下的传统说法，通常将其视为默许。赫希曼（Hirschman）为我们提供了三个选项（退出、呼吁、忠诚），这些依然准确。洞穴鱼的类比增加了一个选项：留下的人在大多无意识的情况下适应了洞穴的压力，直到这种适应与忠诚无法区分。留下来，就是细胞凋亡。

Surface populations

地表种群

The Mexican cavefish has not lost its eye genes in any definitive sense. Nearby surface populations still see perfectly well. What switches sight back on is the next water the fish swims into. Swim elsewhere, and your sight may return. 墨西哥洞穴鱼并没有彻底丢失它们的眼部基因。附近的表层种群依然拥有完美的视力。重新开启视力的关键，在于鱼游入的下一片水域。游向别处，你的视力或许就能恢复。

The Emperor’s New Xerox 皇帝的新复印件 The Tragedy of the Engineering Commons 工程公地的悲剧 The Product Manager Who Manages No Products 不管理产品的产品经理