I appreciate that this author is trying to get management/leadership to own up to their responsibility for a real problem. Yet I wonder what this person thinks

I appreciate that this author is trying to get management/leadership to own up to their responsibility for a real problem. Yet I wonder what this person thinks programmers' proper role is in the organization. (Let me also point out that they chose the word "programmers") It's a good insight that when people only have their ideas shot down, they turn away from that and focus on other things. But I don't appreciate that caring about money is (as usual) cast in a negative light, meanwhile the whole point of a modern business is to turn a profit and make the shareholders money. To the author's point, if the programmer is passionate about market share, and suggests something that leads to market share growth, will they benefit materially from that? If not, isn't that also a reason they would disengage? But see, then we have to talk about paying people instead of just being nice to them when they offer up ideas. That’s a whole different ballgame. I'm not comfortable with how much this seems to imply that leadership shouldn't try to, you know, lead with the vision for the future and all that nice stuff. Input should be welcomed of course, but at some level, leadership should be thinking and communicating about what should be built, and how the world is going to be changed by your "Uber for sandwiches" app. This is why the leadership will take all the money if/when the business is a success. And your programmers should care deeply about how the thing gets built. Because, just for one thing, if it gets built wrong, that's going to become a big problem for them. -- Some other thoughts: The author talks about how if your non-technical ideas get shot down, you won't bother anymore. It can also go the other way- I've definitely been in situations where my technical ideas got shot down enough that I didn't try to offer anything further. Many companies (tech and otherwise) are ultimately a set of cliques- if you're in with the right groups, you and your ideas matter. It's not set in stone; the membership of these groups change over time. But you have to fight and strive for a place within them. That is also a reason people disengage: it’s not worth it, and getting there sucks. It's definitely not good if a team member's interactions are often sarcastic, however, the author's response to the "I told you so" attitude is telling. Usually when people don't like hearing "I told you so" it's because they were in the wrong but don't want to admit it. They'd prefer to move on without doing any thinking or discussion about why the wrong decision was made, and how the team could avoid that in the future. To be clear, it is rude and unhelpful to cop an "I told you so" attitude. But it is also unhelpful and dismissive to label that attitude a problem without digging any further.