People respond to incentives. As the author puts it, many a developer gets hired and eventually they "entrench themselves into some niche in an organization an

People respond to incentives. As the author puts it, many a developer gets hired and eventually they "entrench themselves into some niche in an organization and collect a huge paycheck because no one around them, including them, realizes that they can do a lot better". In my experience, that is what does happen. There is no incentive to do better, and the paychecks in IT happen to be pretty large. I progressed the most as a software developer when I wanted to be hired again after striking out on my own for a bit. What I learned from striking out on my own was that my software development knowledge and abilities may have worked in previous contexts but not where I wanted to be as a next step of my career. While I could have been promoted at a previous job that wouldn't have proven anything on the open job market. This is probably where a lot of dissonance often occurs. People are Senior or Lead developers at one place for a long time then suddenly are out of a job and cannot find another one. So I worked hard to improve in a number of ways because I was highly incentivized to do so - there was no "current position" to fall back on.