[WJW]

If I own a company where (unbeknownst to me) some function has been hopelessly understaffed to the point they can no longer successfully complete all their tasks, a good thing that could happen is that eventually they do fail at their task and the subsequent investigation into why that happened reveals that they are understaffed and overworked. We can then either allocate more resources or reduce their workload so their tasks become more sustainable. The best way to fix it would be to have good enough communication at all levels that there are no such situations in the first place, but humans are imperfect and mistakes happen.

The last thing I would want is for some "heroic" employee to paper over the gaps until they eventually burn out or leave, after which the company will have a huge problem. All the domain knowledge has been concentrating in that one employee and now that they are gone we have lost that knowledge and will need to rebuild it, probably at great cost if it can be done at all. Like you say, if I built my own company with many years of sweat and tears then I am don't want to let easily preventable issues to have such impact.

As to the first few paragraphs of your post: there are many ways to make employees feel appreciated without also making them into a single point of failure for the entire company.

[collaborative]

Actually, you are right. In an ideal world, managers wouldn't need to resort to letting things fail to highlight an area being understaffed

Likewise, in an ideal world, heroes would be compensated according to their performance

But we don't live in an ideal world, so your point is valid