It's just basic game theory, and you see it everywhere. However, it's so annoying in the workplace when your two options seem to come down to try to dominate or be dominated. Especially if you care about quality code and don't care for meetings.
As far as I'm concerned, I think I have to make peace with the fact that if I don't play the game, I am going to be managed by people who don't know what they're doing. But neither option seems particularly good. Should I try to bury my ego and influence from below? Should I work harder and try to climb the corporate ladder? I'm still not sure.
On the internet you can learn from and sometimes interact with the best of the best, so the barrier of entry for what constitutes an "expert" is rised much higher.
I still vividly remember reading a z80 instruction set manual on a rainy day during summer vacation by a lake as a kid (maybe 14?)--writing my own assembly by hand in the margins for fun. TBH I probably still have that exact manual in storage somewhere. Had a green stripe down the front edge/binding iirc.
Back then I easily met folks like myself out there on the net, including many kids younger and smarter than me. It was awesome.
I do hope that some form of that 'net lives on in spirit somehow, given that the Internet I knew has largely fallen to corporate interests.
Now that I have my own kids, it's been painful to watch them have such an utterly different experience than I did.
Their Internet is based entirely on consumption and dark patterns designed to capture their attention, while providing nothing (to them) in return besides a dopamine addiction and body dismorphia.