> rewarding them for their lack of skill I'm not sure it has to do with skill. That would imply the average worker has agency to apply their skills. The dynami

> rewarding them for their lack of skill I'm not sure it has to do with skill. That would imply the average worker has agency to apply their skills. The dynamic is more: leadership doesn't understand any of technical details and is happy to defer blame on engineers. But engineers are often expressly forbidden from proactively solving problems. So any employee with half a brain can read the writing on the wall - projects will fail due to incompetence (literally no way to stop it) so we might as well prepare to clean up the inevitable mess. The result: a brittle system that requires heroics just to keep it operating. Once the heroics are rewarded, and proactive problem solving is eliminated, the cycle is locked in place. Cleaning up messes that you yourself begrudgingly create is the new job description.