This is true from anecdotal experience. However, what confuses things is that the "employer" simply doesn't know what it wants. The "employer" in this case is your immediate manager and, perhaps, a promotion committee that may include your peers. This set can have quite a bit of turnover in a company without good direction. The only constants that get recognized no matter the people (who may not have the ability or interest in evaluating technical contributions) are big talk, puffery, and unjustified confidence and optimism. Not to mention relentless positivity.
One of the relentlessly positive leads, the one who keeps calling me out for being pessimistic, has been swinging from his own petard for the ~year for rushing out changes we can’t really reason about a priori and getting smacked with obscure-to-us corner cases and regressions that are customer visible. I don’t think he’s absorbed yet how much political capital he’s burned through. Both his own and the team’s. People are frustrated. But of course he wouldn’t notice, he’s an optimist and they don’t think about things like that.
