> Ideally it's the responsibility of management, starting at the top, to think critically about what kind of software most benefits the company and reward those that do it. Unfortunately, it's much harder to sell "amazing documentation and test coverage" to a CEO than "Gen AI wrapper that doesn't really do much", so here we are.

What do you think these technical ladder climbers become..? Technical leadership. The truth is, there’s no one technical in big tech leadership. They pay lip service to “tech” to keep up appearances and to satisfy the pleebs that work under them. The only things leadership cares about is the stock price and profitability, literally nothing else matters. If anything the tech itself is a nuisance that pulls their attention from where they’d rather have it, which is anywhere else.

> Ideally it's the responsibility of management, starting at the top, to think critically about what kind of software most benefits the company and reward those that do it.

I work as if that ideal is true, and can’t stand playing the game. But others are still playing the game and eventually they win whatever B.S. position it is that they aspire to, and I get removed from the board.

Especially at some of these bigger tech companies that have been around multiple decades. Im not a huge fan of Microsoft and their products. But man, you know there are probably a few hundred engines who are the bedrock of the company, if they disappeared tomorrow, Microsoft would probably be screwed. They probably work on the products and on areas you never hear about that never get flashy headlines. They are the people keeping the guts of Windows and all their multi-decade projects still pumping. Answering and fixing bug reports on these products.

This approach is notable for benefitting from swelling headcount increases

i.e. if you hire 1000 new people, even if only a small fraction will vouch for you, on average you -and everyone else- will benefit by seeing the # of people who listed you in the "top 5 who helped you being productive" increase

The old Google performance review was arguably similar (the managers could still punish their reports, but peer feedback was valued a lot more), but I think that Google swelled in size because of other effects (probably because managers might've been indirectly rewarded by having more reports, despite managers rarely being among the people who others would list as "making you more productive")

Are you proposing... not paying your employees because paying them will attract people who do it for the money?

that's why the most dominant software companies pay the lowest.