Maybe you worked in some small companies or something where ICs can actually talk to customers, but when you're working in a 100,000 person company, that simply isn't something you do. If you go over your managers' head, they tend to get very angry, and that's just within the company, to say nothing about unsolicited contacts with customers from someone in a position that isn't customer-facing.
I'm currently working for a company which has over 350k employees. My previous company had over 100k. The company before that had over 220k employees. Literally every single one of them is starved of engineers who give enough fucks to speak up.
They are not starved of engineers who "give enough fucks to speak up", they are starved of management who are invested and take enough responsibility to solicit direct feedback from the "assembly line" engineers and then make short term concessions on behalf of long term interests in defiance of what shareholders prefer.
Here is a quote from (imho) one of the top 5 greatest engineers of the 20th century, if not the number 1 greatest engineering leader:
> A major flaw in our system of government, and even in industry, is the latitude allowed to do less than is necessary. Too often officials are willing to accept and adapt to situations they know to be wrong. The tendency is to downplay problems instead of actively trying to correct them. Recognizing this, many subordinates give up, contain their views within themselves, and wait for others to take action. When this happens, the manager is deprived of the experience and ideas of subordinates who generally are more knowledgeable than he in their particular areas.
The only result of fighting the incentive structure put in place by management (far too often: punishment for pushed deadlines, reward for cutting corners) as an engineer is mental illness.
