[tstrimple]

I think it depends on what you mean by "successful". Surely multi-billion dollar financial organizations are by at least some definition successful. They are a complete shit show from a tech standpoint. They are so large they cannot effectively manage specialist developer staff outside of very narrow niches. Standardization when you've got thousands of developers across hundreds of products matters. Maybe some "successful" startup can make things work when they are small. But you'll find they start to standardize when they hit real scale.