The more time I spend working at FAANG, the more I think there's no grand conspiracy to keep us from competing, it's just bad incentives all around.

Want to get promoted as an engineer? Work on something BIG (even if no one asked for it). Want to get promoted as a manager? Get more people on your team (even if you don't need them). Want to get promoted as VP? Better re-org everything so people know you exist (even if re-orgs happen every year). And this problem gets compounded by the fact that the people who are best at playing this game end up making decisions that impact everyone else.

I often wonder if something can be done about this, or is it like a natural law when it comes to big corporations.

If only we had metrics to solve this!