Never say that something can't be measured (at least if it can be observed in the real world...). If engagement manifests as pushback, then measure pushback. I

Never say that something can't be measured (at least if it can be observed in the real world...). If engagement manifests as pushback, then measure pushback. If employees are only working according to spec, then product ownership is effectively centralized with management - instead, increase engineering ownership, back it up by budgeting time for engineering to work on their 20% ideas for the platform, and stackrank the results if needed (big if) by giving bonuses to the most engaged engineers and considering terminating the engineers who won't engage (considering being the operative word here, many perfectly OK reasons why an engineer won't engage which aren't grounds for pushing him out of the team), which would open up spots on the team for engineers who might engage. It's really kind of sad reading HN comments on how "oh it must be the fault of all those crappy engineers." We've all met those people who couldn't FizzBuzz their way out of a paper bag, but among the rest, most suffer from poor management. The solution to poor management is not running after mythical rock stars, it's better management.