I’m starting to think the mistake is when platform teams try to standardize the user-facing decisions instead of the plumbing. Shared auth, logging, design tokens, rollout patterns… fine. Shared copy, workflow shape, and every edge-case screen? that’s where teams start feeling like they’re just decorating someone else’s product.
At work, the places we’ve fought least were the ones where the platform gave us a narrow set of guardrails and then got out of the way. Where do you draw that line?
