Or perhaps they have and that is why your performance ratings are flat, you get a lousy annual raise/bonus (if any), and your career is stalled?
The basic structure of small consistent pay bumps was extremely effective when people stayed at companies for decades. Work twice as hard and make 2 percent more for the next 30 years, that’s a big bump. Pensions pushed that out so even people nearing retirement still had reason to care.
I am not recommending people do the minimum, just acknowledging how people respond to incentives.
So I’m basically just vegetating until I quit.
That's an extreme example, but even in a "good" system, management is notoriously blind to the actual value of an engineer. In a perfect system, performance could be measured empirically and compensation would be based on that. But no one on earth has figured that out yet, and something tells me they never will.
Imagine a world in which it's very difficult to assess performance, because that's often the reality.
How does this system flourish if everyone is doing the minimum / least?
It doesn't. It fails.
'Do A Good Job'.
That the performance reviews say are a secondary factor.
If you all stop doing good work, it will fall apart quickly and you will all be poor.
I'm replying late, but wow, this is a gem of an argument.
Really? The economic incentives that create this lucrative field in the first place are all gonna collapse if devs realize they don't need to bust ass at their job anymore? It's amazing that you think the individual work ethic of engineers is the only thing holding the tech economy together.