[DanielHB]

I think a lot of this sentiment comes from the human size of modern institutions and corporations. A lot of us have lived through that small fraction of time where software engineering was done in small isolated groups working on top of small foundations. These days it is much harder for small groups of excellent people to achieve a lot more than their mediocre peers in already established fields.

Fact is large institutions inevitably lead to these kind of inefficiencies, we just moved on to larger projects and companies. If anything this phenomena is better explained by reduction in productivity growth than social media, in a realm of low productivity growth there is a tendency for consolidation which leads to larger companies and thus more BS.

Governments and institutions also have grown a lot more BS but I believe it is mostly tied to high population growth in the previous 100 years than low productivity growth. After all governments don't consolidate like companies do (war vs mergers/acquisitions/bankrupcies).

It is a common trope of history how big institution grows so big they crumble under their own weight of inefficiencies. All the way back to the roman empire and probably countless more examples even earlier.