I'm thinking 1 is more like: "The devs who can write a new system are not the same as the devs who can keep a system running."
That's definitely true in my experience. The people you can hire to write a totally new system are out there in abundance. But finding a guy or gal good at maintenance is actually surprisingly difficult. Good maintenance devs are worth their weight in gold.
Yes! Was trying to keep the 2 points tightly integrated but your thinking is definitely closer to analog31's interpretation of the political economics.
There can be a cyclical aspect to the situation: the new hire gives up fixing legacy and rewrites the base out of anger. Probably many other archetypes that I missed, all of which resemble the basic setup. One might also generalize "coding culture" to "culture around legal codes".
To pile on your point: meanwhile, the suboptimal job market conditions (shall we say) preps the engineering culture for vicious spirals
These are all good points, but the people I'm talking about at a high level are more like managers, not devs. The managers haven't even expressed an interest in managing anything.
That's definitely true in my experience. The people you can hire to write a totally new system are out there in abundance. But finding a guy or gal good at maintenance is actually surprisingly difficult. Good maintenance devs are worth their weight in gold.