The Model Context Protocol (MCP) promises to standardize AI-tool interactions as the “USB-C for AI.” While its simplicity accelerates adoption, MCP systematically overlooks four decades of hard-won lessons from distributed systems. This isn’t an academic concern: enterprises deploying MCP today are building on foundations that lack fundamental capabilities that every production remote-procedure calling (RPC) system, since 1982, has deemed essential.

Individual contributors can expect workplace psychological safety, but managers do not. This is not something that can be fixed, it's part of the role. Like how a plumber will sometimes have to smell sewage.

Reasons:

1. Managers are more or less fungible.
2. They compete against each other since contributors and other resources are limited.
3. They are exposed to competitive pressures affecting the company.
4. They are not fully informed about the the subjects for which they are responsible.
5. Nobody will protect managers from these factors the way an IC is protected.

Managers can have a psychologically safe environment in a "peace through strength" fashion, or by being in the right place at the right time. But it is not permanent, and regression to the mean is just a growth cycle or reorg away.