Pretty much every company I’ve been in or know of values a vertical trajectory instead of a horizontal one for its employees i.e becoming a manager nearly always means a faster salary progression than becoming an expert in one or multiple fields.
Why is expertise valued less?
Nobody values actual competent leadership, they just pretend they do, they cosplay that that’s what they’re into.
People value kissing up to your boss, being type A, being faux-jovial, having no life outside of work, being attractive and charming, and most importantly, having connected friends.
MBAs are the idiots who couldn’t actually learn real math or some subset of practical applied physics, but wanted to be important in a business.
They’re the ones who just make up bullshit and believe it untill it becomes reality. This generates not so much technical debt, as literal debt, malinvestment, capital misallocation, financial risk.
But, they don’t pay that risk, they fire everyone to pay for their mistakes, their delusions.
And then when they do that, that is called ‘leadership’.
Why is this the paradigm?
Because our society is deeply, deeply corrupt and fradulent, all the way through.