I worked a job where this was the case. The "worst" programmers would literally stay late and knock off the easiest fixes. They got credit and were fine.

I once spent 2 weeks solving 4 related weird crashes that everyone complained about. Involved rewriting code that when I was finished removed 4,514 lines of code and never crashed again. I had my annual review 2 weeks later and the scoreboard was brought up. I told my boss I should get paid more for removing 4,514 lines of spaghetti from the software that made the "company nut". He laughed at me. 3 days later the CEO came down, personally thanked me as they were flooded with client happiness and took me to lunch. Some ear bending and casual talk about vision...next day the scoreboard was taken down and I was in charge of "core" functionality.

I always find it funny when management lauds developers for aggressive bug fixing. Do they not realize that the developers introduced those bugs in the first place?

Or even worse, the Wally-from-Dilbert strategy when a bug bounty was announced: "I'm gonna write me a new minivan this afternoon."