[neilv]

I can believe that's a common value at a company, and I'm a little surprised that some others here can't believe it.

I'd add to that: for all but the most intractably huge companies, there's a somewhat different, or additional, atmosphere that I think is even more important: everyone is focused on the success of the project/company.

Put another way: if you could somehow omnisciently and top-down get each person individually coordinated such that all they need to do is their complete their assigned tasks on schedule and with high quality, that'd be great. But, realistically, you can't (well, not in innovative startups, nor in a lot of tech work). So, if you can get people thinking and coordinating towards goals beyond whatever task someone told them to do, then then you can be more effective collectively.

Maybe you the craft you had in mind already implicitly encompassed this focus towards larger goals. But if you look at popular modern methodologies, organizational incentives, etc., it's pretty clear that's not implied many places.