Comment by Chaosvex

On complex codebases, I've seen this strategy absolutely decimate team moral.

A large tech company decided to stop having subteams responsible for particular features or areas of the code for one of their products. The result was developers having to spend inordinate amounts of time researching highly complex spec documents and reference manuals on a daily basis for even the smallest of fixes. It drove moral into the ground and developers started a mass exodus to other teams or tech companies.

After some changes of management for the team, the policy had to be reversed to stem the bleeding. Turns out that developers don't like permanently being in unfamiliar territory.