I tend to agree - big tech (and the work economy in general) is somehow managing to squander vast amounts of human potential, and leaving billions of dollars on the table in the process.

Pigeonholing - where people are expected to perform the same task every day, in the same domain, for years on end - is certainly part of it. Humans are not robots. Rather, they thrive on growth, variety, and learning to do new things. But growth is considered a cost center at most companies, and variety is typically forbidden.

Tying people to projects - and punishing them for switching projects autonomously - often results in work being done slowly, poorly, and even resentfully.

Usually the reward for completing one's tasks efficiently is simply to be given more work to do. Presenteeism trumps actual productivity.

I wonder if Valve is still - or was ever - operating with a "work on whatever you want" system, and I wonder how well it could work in practice.

Surely there is some necessary and unpleasant "grunt work" that nobody will want to do, but presumably if it's important then some agreement could be reached to get it done anyway, rather than simply ordering a low-status person to do it as usually happens at a traditional company.