The equivalent of 'days since last injury' bonuses is the first method that comes to mind, until you consider that this would mean people would be more likely to hide things going wrong.

So then many things are to rely on executive culture, and an executive who will walk the line and get their info from people at the bottom is like a unicorn. That won't scale, but it does work if you do have such an executive. Naturally they would need a basic understanding of how supply is created in their firm.

Yet there is something. Toyota Hiluxes and Honda Super Cubs got popular due to maintenance ease. AK-47s. Miele vacuums. Older Thinkpads.

What measures would make the human equivalent visible?

One basic example is not counting bugs as points in your ticket tracker. At my last job I had coworkers whose velocity was almost double everyone else’s but it was because they kept deploying and then fixing their own bugs.

I dont have an answer and you are mostly correct. I received some advice based on this that made sense which was to pick the roles in your career that naturally made it easier. Sales, PM, Dev etc and not support, Devops, escalation management, CSM etc.