Also we're not on the same page about reward/excellency. Having a high salary after graduation doesn't mean you're doing good / excellent work. You can, and I've heard a lot of people saying it, coast along being paid for not a lot.

Every company I worked at had terrible software, there was no excellency in them (which backfires toward all society). Another proof to me that the system is not optimizing excellency. It's short term gain spread over a wide network of ignorance (your customer can never assess of your work quality, he has no clue about the domain).