The infra part particularly resonated with me. Leadership caring about high level metrics deprioritize "in-the-weeds" dev experience. At <redacted applied ML place>, I was working on data infra, but pressure from above made it impossible to have time to focus and instead focused on short-term deliverables. It was hard to convince others to adjust their priorities for "the greater good".

The only way to make things better (in my mind) was to use my own time to improve the infra, and because the metrics don't track these infra improvements I don't get rewarded so I just became burned out.

Part of me think this is the reason why you want bloat in orgs, so that motivated people with enough redundancy will actually feel comfortable chasing longer term incentives.