Money side is like a mini-VC like ecosystem inside a large corp; people on the money side spend the money in whatever ways they need to maintain their little fiefdoms. Additionally, and with their new found power, they'll layer in a bunch of morons to prevent operations people - who's sole job is to eliminate inefficiencies everywhere - from understanding that the money side is basically a giant game.
If the operations people ever fully understood how badly the money people are fucking things up, they'd have leverage to use against the players on the money side and it'd be game over.
It's a way to establish power and extract value out of what would otherwise be a more efficient company or system, since those efficiencies don't benefit you directly. The company might do better but your incentives align in a way to extract value from it. If the customer gets burned, or poor quality products get launched, the feedback mechanism is broken. Consolidating power and crushing the competition is more tangible than anything the business actually does.
Which is why stock compensation was expected to help this, at least in theory.
> It's a way to establish power and extract value out of what would otherwise be a more efficient company or system, since those efficiencies don't benefit you directly. The company might do better but your incentives align in a way to extract value from it
This is a fancy way of saying corruption. Twisting the system to be used for your own ends, be they strategic, or just straight-up cash-in-my-pocket, is corruption.
Operations workers can see the daily inefficiencies and profit from them, or inject themselves into processes and decisions in ways that will benefit them. Adding a layer of moron/process/politics slows or halts this bad behavior, at the cost of increased overhead and inefficiency.
If the operations people ever fully understood how badly the money people are fucking things up, they'd have leverage to use against the players on the money side and it'd be game over.