But not all companies are sociopath boondoggles. Some are companies where people are trying to do the right thing (make money, grow business), and management would prefer to be successful. In those environments, we still get "promotion-driven-development" because, sadly, most managers are not software engineers and can be successfully bullshitted. And it's not even always malicious: you take someone who is a great people person but a mediocre engineer (huh, that correlates a lot), and they really think that this pile of steaming shit idea is a good idea, and their genuine enthusiasm convinces management who also don't know better. This mediocre engineer really wants to do good but has no idea why their idea is fucking herpes - because they are not competent enough to understand why. Dunning Kruger time. And of course the competent engineers are all Autistic and come across as rude, disparaging assholes in neurotypical management's eyes, and everyone gets herpes except mediocre engineer who gets promoted (possibly into management).

In that situation you have to have "... a handful of good engineers and going totally rogue, we outperformed the entire department pretty effortlessly."

All of my major career jumps have involved "going rogue", and having the outcome being recognized. And one time I was basically fired for it, and the work buried by a psychopath, and the remaining team did it anyway and delivered the solution, averting a product-ending scaling cliff. YMMV.

But not all companies are like that, and in some places you can point out to management that the idea is bad, and management agrees. In my current job we had someone pitch a fabulous promotion opportunity that was not merely a total waste of time but also fundamentally missed (didn't even attempt to identify) the root cause of the problem it was trying to solve, and fortunately management agreed when we pointed it out. Yay!

So I don't think it's as hopeless as you make out, at least not everywhere. I'm having fun right now, and getting paid enough (it's never enough).