I also work for a company where everyone writes and reads and we have almost no meetings at all, no scrum, etc, and I didn't notice any of these problems. It's

I also work for a company where everyone writes and reads and we have almost no meetings at all, no scrum, etc, and I didn't notice any of these problems. It's the best place I've worked at and I'm already > 20 years into this. To me the problem you describe is orthogonal to the fact you have a writing culture or not. I bet if you didn't have that writing culture you would still have all those problems and just a ton more meetings and conversations with managers. I've been at places like that in the past and the best solution for me was to quit, I just couldn't stand it. For example, promotions: I've been in that hunger games you mention where you have to promote yourself to death to have a promotion, and I hated it. Agree with you it was a real problem, specially for people that don't like to do marketing of themselves. At my current company your team lead is ultimately responsible of the output of the team, so with consideration of the team's opinions, he ultimately decides if you get a raise each year or not. If he wants you in the team you get a raise, if he doesn't you get a lower one or none at all. You can look for another team within the company or you can leave, up to you. Leads are professional enough like to not promote just friends, because they're also accountable in the same way up the chain. And that's it. At the end of the day your team, the 6 or 10 people you work with every day, they know very clearly if they want you or not, no need for 100 page essays about your awesomeness.