As an executive you’re in a position to influence and make changes for folks below you, I guess they really don’t give a shit. Self > team I suppose
Imagine how much harder the chinese telephone game gets if some people actively sabotage it.
As a c-suite exec, I spend most of my time in meetings that lead to very little change and I look on with a bit of envy on ICs who get to improve things without asking for permission first.
- the labor market dictates how many people you can hire.
- Speaking of budgets: they are not unlimited;
- Often what you can build depends on the levels of tech and organizational debt you have built up. A small startup simply doesn't have the organizational set-up and know-how to become a hospital and vice versa. This limits how far you can take your plans.
- Vested interests in your employee pool; if the company is (say) a dedicated Ruby on Rails shop and you decree a big rewrite in Rust then you can expect a large part of your employees to go looking elsewhere. This limits what you can build.
- Prior commitments; if there is a long-running project going on then you need to keep that staffed to maintain internal knowledge or else it will dissipate. It's not uncommon that 90% of employees is already assigned to something and you can't start new things without dropping old things.
- etc etc etc
It is extremely common for an executive to come in and start off with bold plans to improve things, then slowly discover why things are the way they are.
The same is true of a new IC coming into a new code base.
The things you mention are not great excuses for not being able to make any change. If those things overwhelm an exec, that exec should probably step aside and let someone else try.
The IC at the bottom is likely limited to a specific project or feature. They have a lot of space to roam in that box, but they inevitably have a small box.
What else can be done differently other than giving up and doing everything yourself? But once you start doing everything yourself you are no longer at the top. You are at the very bottom.
Source: Daily experience. :-D
For big change to work there has to be the right culture set by the board and this has to feed down.
Heck, maybe in the not so distant futures a DAO like setup will exist that will flip all this on its head.
I like my job, but the fact that I have to do it or else lose my house makes it less joyful than it might otherwise be.
Not sure what my boss can do about that.