The Mexican cavefish Astyanax mexicanus offers a precise biological model for what happens inside successful companies. In the limestone caves beneath the Sierra del Abra, the fish triggers early apoptosis in lens-building tissue within hours of fertilization, redirecting metabolic energy toward olfaction, fat reserves, and deeper feeding — traits the dark environment actually rewards. The genome remains identical to surface populations kilometres away; only expression changes. Companies undergo the same suppression: once rapid growth forces hiring at speed, the bar for competence bends until it disappears. Engineers who have never worked elsewhere learn the house style, then sit on hiring panels selecting for comfort with the prevailing mess. After a few cycles, the organization fills with well-meaning people who have only ever known the cave.

The symptoms are technical and measurable: build pipelines only the original author can run, deployments fragile enough to require a senior engineer on call permanently, wikis so outdated they might as well be hieroglyphics. Because revenue and headcount still climb, leadership assumes the foundations are sound. Careful engineering becomes a vestigial trait — the capacity exists but the environment suppresses its expression. An engineer who insists on expressing it invests in an organ the cave will not feed.

The predictable response is a centre of excellence charged with writing standards, enforcing templates, and running mandatory rituals. In healthy companies, excellence is ambient and distributed; in cave dwellers it is extracted into a process shop that suppresses the very trait its name claims to cultivate. High barriers to entry let incumbents accumulate bureaucracy because no credible entrant forces discipline. Sighted engineers arrive, realize the place runs on stored fat from earlier seasons, and leave within a year rather than go blind.

Staying is not mere acquiescence — it is biological adaptation. The people who remain undergo apoptosis outside their awareness until the adaptation is indistinguishable from loyalty. Yet the eye genes persist in the genome. Surface populations nearby still see perfectly. What switches sight back on is the next water the fish swims into: a market shift, a competitor, or a leadership change that finally rewards the suppressed trait.