Being good at reading code isn't a skill that helps large software projects stay on rails.

It's more about being good at juggling 1000 balls at the same time. It's 99.9% of the time a management problem, not a software problem.

The successful projects I've worked on, the technical staff have been given autonomy, responsibility and full insight into the problem space. This requires managers putting a lot of trust in the engineers, but it works.

Large projects I've worked on failed simply because nobody wanted the solution in the first place.

In government I've seen many millions spent on projects that were either forgotten about or the politician that requested it lost office.