It's not just you, I thought the same thing while reading the article. It may be a different thing if you're working on a profit center vs on a cost center I g

It's not just you, I thought the same thing while reading the article. It may be a different thing if you're working on a profit center vs on a cost center I guess. If your clients are outsourcing their software needs to you (so, basically, you are in a cost center), the focus is on reducing the costs of production: you want to deliver as cheaply as possible, no need to innovate. Usually what happens in this situation is that the average joes end up taking the job of building the (boring) product while the best guys build tools to automate the job of the joes, reducing costs in order to increase the profit margin. The innovative work end up in the hand of the tool builders. However, if you work on a profit center, innovation is the core of the job; the meat is on the external product, and the tool builders just need to automate the boring parts (doing the job the other guys don't want to do.)