https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exit,_Voice,_and_Loyalty

These days it seems to be deeply unpopular though: the normal pattern is superficial Loyalty, followed by a quick dash to Exit as soon as something slightly better pops up. Anybody even attempting to Voice and actually change the organization is laughed off as hopelessly naive, especially if they're junior.

As a counterexample, I worked at a company with an extremely bureaucratic release process involving multiple levels of reviews from stakeholders, people manually monitoring a system after a release, and a policy of performing deployments only at nights, all indicators of the lack of confidence in the engineering processes of the organization.

While company management talked a lot about faster releases, “falling behind in the age of AI”, and the like, they also loved their processes and would rather keep it as to them it was a sign of meticulousness and quality. I hated it, but I don’t see how anyone, even the people who carried far more importance than me could have changed it, even though they’d acknowledge that it was slow and could do with more automation in private discussions.

This is important. Both logic and will are required. If only one of the 2 exists the impact can be limited if any at all. Broadly speaking, mostly, people have the logic but not the "will" in a sense that latter gets diluted by factors like ego, seniority, org lag etc.

you can't even change the culture in a restaurant without replacing every single person.

1. who is Drew DeVault?

2. what change did he bring to Linode?

I lost the context after 'the same title "Developer"'

If it's not part of my job, and neither is my own company, it's not my problem.

Everyone likes working for these companies, but this requires a mature work culture. The people with seniority have to be competent and experienced enough to distinguish good ideas and not abuse their position for personal gain.

In my experience these good places tend to be midsized companies. In contrast, just about any team you land in at a big tech company is going to be siloed off with one or more psychopaths at the helm who never "spent enough time in the trenches" to understand what healthy management looks like. The same is true at a startup. Those are workplaces mired in politics precisely because nobody in charge knows what good sense is and they do everything in their power to make sure anyone with a good idea is silenced or bullied out.

I know I’ll get some whataboutisms of people who work for places that give good raises for good work. Great for you but you’re in the minority.