I definitely think tools can have a lot of leverage, and an experienced IC could easily develop a tool that would save time for the whole team. And I've seen it happen.

But IME this is the exception rather than the rule. The experienced engineer usually gets the credit for building the system with the tool (for which it was essential), but not building the tool itself. The tool is considered useless until someone has proved it on a important, shipping project.

I'm a manager and I have a member of my team that does exactly this. They have built tools and process that has allowed everyone else to be more efficient. Anyone on my team can, but they gravitate towards it. It's up to a manager to make sure they are paid appropriately and make sure that they are given space to actually do this type of work.

Can not be customer satisfaction (by quality) or employee happiness or retention.

I wonder what those other metrics are.

A big one is that managers are de facto judged by the size of their team (and, for more senior ones, the size of the tree underneath them, too). It seems to be really, really hard to have middle management in an organisation without "maximise headcount" becoming an unofficial goal.

Edit: Employee happiness is an interesting one here. It's quite believable to me that being seen to cut down a few tall poppies might have a positive impact on (mean) employee happiness in some cases.

> It's quite believable to me that being seen to cut down a few tall poppies might have a positive impact on (mean) employee happiness in some cases.

This again... I dread to imagine going through the day around people that think like this. But people that think like this exist, and I imagine they concentrate somewhere. If some place makes them happy (and everybody else unhappy as a consequence), you'll probably find them there. This is really believable.