I'm also pretty sure that if these incentives were in place we would see a lot of engineers switch to these really interesting tasks. No one wants to shovel http requests back and forth, they want to build things. I think a lot of internet, and software, infrastructure is more compelling work than what most high level engineers work on.
It is but the number of people who can understand it's value is inversely proportional to the interest of the work. I had to setup a TAI server for a trading company I worked in because no other time mechanism could record the trades happening reliably without duplicates. I would have been interested in making it a universal service. It would take me an hour long presentation to explain to other programmers with a physics background why this was absolutely essential. I can't imagine ever convincing a suit as to why they should pay for it.
My opportunity cost is a mid six figure salary vs the hustle of trying to sell something that can be copied very easily by others. Not worth my time or effort any more.
