The Hidden Cost of Heroism in Big Tech Engineering

At first glance, the image of the lone engineer working late nights to rescue a failing project seems romantic. But according to software industry observer Sean Goedecke, this hero culture in large tech companies masks a troubling reality: These systemic inefficiencies persist precisely because companies benefit from exploiting engineers' willingness to sacrifice themselves for the greater good.

The System Always Wins

Large tech companies operate through complex, evolved systems of processes and incentives rather than individual brilliance. As Goedecke explains, outcomes at companies like Google or Meta are determined by:

• Legible systems: OKRs, promotion criteria, and formal processes
• Illegible systems: Informal networks, backchannel conversations, and cultural norms

These systems naturally accumulate inefficiencies as companies scale. While engineers often join tech hoping to optimize systems, they discover that meaningful structural change requires crossing an invisible line. As Goedecke notes: "Past a certain point, working on efficiency-related stuff instead of your actual projects will get you punished, not rewarded."

The Heroism Trap

This creates a tension unique to large tech organizations:

1. Engineers feel visceral discomfort with inefficiency due to their intrinsic drive to optimize (detailed in Goedecke's addiction to being useful)
2. Companies structurally reward short-term feature delivery over systemic improvements
3. The gap between what's right and what's rewarded creates opportunities for "heroic" interventions

Yet these interventions rarely benefit the engineer or the company long-term. As Goedecke starkly puts it: "It doesn't really matter how efficient you made some corner of the Google Wave team if the whole product was doomed."

The Exploitation Economy

Where heroism becomes particularly damaging is in how it enables exploitation:

• Product managers maintain "easy target" lists of engineers willing to do cross-team work that benefits the PM's metrics but not the engineer's career
• Engineering managers quietly allow reports to handle glue work (documentation, process fixes) that should be managerial responsibilities
• During crunch periods, organizations engage in resource wars where heroes become bargaining chips

"Predators attempt to appeal to a hero's internal compulsion to be useful," Goedecke writes, noting that promotions and bonuses—the true currency of tech companies—rarely follow these sacrifices.

Breaking the Cycle

The solution requires both individual and systemic awareness:

• Engineers should track whether efficiency work translates to tangible rewards (promotions, bonuses)
• Recognize that some inefficiency is the unavoidable cost of scale (as explored in Dan Luu's marginal features analysis)
• Understand that heroic interventions often delay necessary systemic change

As Goedecke concludes in his broader analysis of seeing like a software company, sustainable improvement comes from aligning personal effort with organizational incentives rather than fighting against them.

For engineers feeling trapped in this dynamic, Goedecke's related piece on getting the main thing right offers tactical alternatives to heroism—focusing effort where it creates measurable impact rather than temporary relief.