I am no capitalism apologist. The interoperability of technicians diminishes our marketplace bargaining power, thus diminishing labor's leverage over management/capital. At this point in my life, I have accepted this trade-off in exchange for 1) mutual code-review, 2) nights off on-call, 3) opportunities to learn new tech, 4) a product roadmap that can be prioritized without a freaking gant-chart to slot e.g. language-dependent work into language-adherent technicians' backlogs.

While these and other factors make my role less stressful, and my team more effective, I do concede that knowledge dissemination diminishes tech workers' bargaining power.

I'm not defending them, but I know I'd love for my shop -- we do the same things as them -- to grow in this way.

If they're successful, you're left with a team who adheres to or even enjoys the rules and rituals laid down by Pivotal, and you end up with that team I described who can "kinda-sorta mostly get anything done... eventually... with the help of a few external vendors..." From a business perspective, this isn't a terrible place to be.

If they aren't successful, oops, your entire team churned during your engagement with Pivotal, but don't worry -- they're happy to help out with your hiring processes.