How Hero Culture Destroys Engineering Efficiency

A system is neglected until it breaks. Someone works a weekend to fix it. Management celebrates the rescue. Nobody is incentivized to prevent the next failure because prevention isn't visible. The engineer who kept the system healthy gets no recognition. The hero who let it rot gets a bonus. The incentive is to let things rot.

Reward the cleaners, not the heroes. Measure and celebrate low incident rates, stable systems, and clean codebases. If your incentive structure rewards firefighting, engineers will generate fires. Adam Smith's invisible hand works at the individual level. The company's survival depends on aligning individual pursuit with collective health.