Step 1: throw some words from your keyboard into a comment box and claim it was humor. Step 2: downvote people that don't laugh. Step 3: someday realize that humor and metaphor are not mutually exclusive.
> Any organization that designs a system (defined broadly) will produce a design whose structure is a copy of the organization's communication structure. — Melvin E. Conway (via Wikipedia)
> The law is based on the reasoning that in order for a product to function, the authors and designers of its component parts must communicate with each other in order to ensure compatibility between the components. Therefore, the technical structure of a system will reflect the social boundaries of the organizations that produced it, across which communication is more difficult. In colloquial terms, it means complex products end up "shaped like" the organizational structure they are designed in or designed for. The law is applied primarily in the field of software architecture, though Conway directed it more broadly and its assumptions and conclusions apply to most technical fields.
Conway's Law does not apply (doesn't say one thing or another) regarding the connection source code and layoffs.