Like an army outrunning its logistics train, complexity increases until it reaches the point where such programmers can no longer reliably cope with it. At this point, complexity and our abilities to contain it reach an uneasy equilibrium. The blitzkrieg bogs down into a siege. Once simple repairs become all day affairs, as the code turns to mud. It becomes increasingly difficult for management to tell how long such repairs ought to take.
Simple objectives turn into trench warfare.
Everyone becomes resigned to a turgid pace. It is interesting to ask whether some of the differences in productivity seen between hyper-productive organizations and typical shops are due not to differences in talent, but differences in terrain. Mud is hard to march through. Sometimes, complexity wins. Status in the programmer's primate pecking order is often earned through ritual displays of cleverness, rather than through workman-like displays of simplicity and clarity.