> the parts in the middle usually have no idea what to do with “exceptional” reports that cross their desks
Or they explicitly don't want to report them because it makes it look like they don't know what they are doing, or they are afraid that it would create more work for them and they are already overworked.
Right, that’s what I meant by “a clean interface to their boss”—because they’re unaware that rethrowing these exceptions is a (perhaps implicit) part of their job description, and they certainly don’t think it’s part of their boss’s job description, they think that 1. they’ll be doing something they’re not supposed to be doing by rethrowing the exception, and 2. it’ll be their own boss’s job to handle the exception, probably by throwing out the report and then trusting them less to get stuff done on their own.
more realistically: first manager installed the system as a virtuous feedback gathering mechanism, then three turnover later as the first crunch hit faults become a metric to optimize and everyone gets incentived on reducing them, at which point gaming the system ensues
Or they explicitly don't want to report them because it makes it look like they don't know what they are doing, or they are afraid that it would create more work for them and they are already overworked.