Consulting with companies on productivity I can’t express how much devs not feeling like they have representation/a voice at the exec level negates comp effectiveness.
What we're saying is that coders are often willing to pay for "a seat at the table". But maybe management can sell them a placebo.
It's not clear-cut that management ignoring coders will always turn out for the worse, even though management that always ignores coders probably has, historically. Maybe sometimes their voice matters and sometimes not.
Companies for whom engineering is key need to (at least to some extent) organise themselves around engineering. The strategic decisions need to take into account the needs and capabilities of engineering and engineers. If they don't then they won't be good at it. They'll be staffed with mediocre people who generate mediocre output very slowly.
What I’m referring to is that period where engineers want to stay vs being heavily comp’d to stay. You can see people throughout this thread saying pay me a large amount and I’ll stare at a wall. If you want engineers not to fully optimize comp (read as $$$$$) against the market they need to feel represented and like they have a say in day to day decisions in the company.