> Either way, to promote PS and get a more engaged team, a manager has to downplay the reality of the situation. This leads to management allowing complicated pet projects, rewrites, and feedback meetings that go nowhere all for the sake of appeasing egos. Engineers tend not to be overly people-savvy but we catch on eventually.

Does it always have to be dishonest? "We need to implement a bog-standard CRUD app for XYZ, so it's a good opportunity to try some new technology stack / make a really polished codebase / ..." ought to be the kind of conversation that you can have.