This take is overly cynical. Every major corporation has people with influence who care and fight for good outcomes. They win some fights, they lose others. The only evidence you need is to notice the needlessly good decisions that were made in the past.

Some greatest hits:

- CoreAudio, Mac OS memory management, kernel in general, and many other decisions

- Google's internal dev tooling, Go, and Chrome (at least, in its day)

- C#, .NET, and Typescript (even Microsoft does good work)

One of the hallmarks of heroic engineering work is that everyone takes it for granted afterward. Open source browsers that work, audio that just works, successors to C/C++ with actual support and adoption, operating systems that respond gracefully under load, etc. ... none of these things were guaranteed, or directly aligned with short-term financial incentives. Now, we just assume they're a requirement.

Part of the "sensibility" I'm talking about is seeking to build things that are so boring and reliable that nobody notices them anymore.

Your incentive is to stay in the job so you can vest. Fighting the slide may just make enemies