> They milk the credit and move on, leaving the next engineer explain to management that what they have is not what they believe they have.

I worked with a Pete. He was brilliant. He wrote all proof of concepts that drove major flagship products. He showcased them. He proved the concept worked. He delivered with lightning fast time-to-market.

He also made it abundantly clear to management that his proof of concepts required major architectural overhauls to make them maintainable. That was the tradeoff. This was clear from the start.

Managers didn't listened. They could not or would not understand why you'd need to rearchitect a service that was working, in spite of the very creator of said service saying it. They believed, or wanted to believe, that the project was done and over.

The problem aren't the Petes. The concept of technical debt is either foreign or tabu for managers. They have to sell the higher-ups the need to spend more resources fixing something that works. It's bad for careers.

The weird thing is management knows who the Pete-s are (either directly, or they know a guy who knows the guy), and once the awards ceremonies are over, and things start breaking in prod, you can bet you ass Pete's Teams will start chiming.