It can be pretty stifling on giant teams to make any actual change.

Sure it sounds romantic to sit down with a cup of coffee and write some amazing code that makes things better. The reality is writing documents, hunting down code owners and stakeholders, organizing meetings and running into tons of adversity just so you can attempt something very risky as it is impossible to have full context on everything.

Consider that companies like these can afford to pay $300k USD precisely to just spin their wheels, because they simply don't want them going elsewhere where they might compete...

Sounds to me like they aren't paying enough for talent if they can afford to leave it unused. Very similar to landlords being able to afford leaving a property empty rather than lowering the rent.

That’s been my theory for a long time now.

They don’t care what devs do as long as nobody else can hire them

This equation changed this year, I think. The pendulum is swinging the other way. I suspect we'll see a lot more PIPs at Google.

So glad I got out of there before it got ugly.

One doesn't get paid $300k/year to fuck around and choose what you work on yourself. Very often you will get punished for making management decisions above your pay grade at this level.

Especially if your decisions are better and more popular than your manager's.

As a manager in big tech, it’s fantastic when folks come up with their own ideas. But the hard part is not just coming up with the idea: you have to evangelize it horizontally and vertically, and be open to the possibility that there are valid reasons not to do your idea. Helping folks sell their idea or convincing them it might be a hard sell is part of my job.