> If his monetary value to the company was as said why would any other metric like complexity even remotely matter

Here is why: I turned off a feature flag in our feature flagging service which saved company 10% infra cost, do you think I can be promoted to Staff+ and lead 50 engineers?

Promotions and/or recognitions in corporate environments works differently.

I don't agree with it, but this is how it works: If what you did feels simple, anyone else can do it as well, why should we promote you for finding such silly mistake or improvement.