[lolinder]

This philosophy only works if you live in one of three simplified universes: either your employees are fully bought in to the company's goals, or you can always pay them enough money for them to keep working for you without any intrinsic motivation, or your employees really are interchangeable cogs and retention doesn't matter.

None of these simplified models reflect the real world. No employee is fully bought into the company's goals. Odds are you don't actually have enough money to beat all other offers. And the cost of turning employees into interchangeable cogs is that you need a lot more of them than if you're willing to let them be individuals.

The result is that while the company has its own goals, those goals are best served by making sure that the employees are at least happy enough that turnover is kept low. And a big part of keeping creatives happy (not just in software) is letting them try new things and experiment.

(This is aside from the tangible benefits that your organization gets from allowing people to be creative, which I think is not negligible.)