On that note, a quick shot-out because I've been lucky enough to see the opposite happen at a big company too. Performance cycles at the company very much disincentivized big bets. Some engineers really thought project "X" was important, but it was risky— if it didn't pay off by the end of the cycle, per the way the bureaucracy worked, it wouldn't be great.
The manager very much tried his best to protect them against this. In fact I don't think it paid that cycle, but the project remained active until it did eventually pay off. Shoutout to managers like this. The easy route is to act like a messenger for higher-ups, and never put your own skin in the game— but there's some out there that want to do what's best, not what's easy.
