Totally agree with those sentiments - seldom (bordering on never) have i worked in a job where short-term career path to the top wasn't put in front of everything else. The thing I find amazing, though, is that these people almost never see that doing the groundwork well will untimately advance their position simply by allowing them/their teams to be more productive (and produce more quality - which is often overlooked too).

The general trend for me is.....get a job in a place that talks the talk at interview but in reality is a shambles....work my butt off to introduce patterns and practices, architectures and frameworks with zero support from above...deliver quality apps to the desk on the back of the poorest of analysis(I single out end users and bypass the reams of useless documentation - every time I'm amazed at the uselessness of business/systems/etc. analysis)...then...I ALWAYS find that "managers" crop up out of nowhere and take over, pilling in behind the success of the project/product.

I'm used to this now and know that that's how it works but it just totally bemuses(and often amuses) me that these folks don't even invest the time to know what the product actually is/does/etc. before claiming it as their own.

I also find that if a project is successful suddenly, overnight, the management hierarchy deepens - career builders on the move which is fair enough but ultimately it leaves the people who made the thing a success feeling futher down the ladder. So often have I seen the best people with the most motivation and drive to have a project succeed - and who ultimately MAKE the thing succeed - being...well...ignored. And I not just talking about technical people but mostly, in fact, the users who drive the thing on behalf of their peers.

The other thing that does annoy me depending on my mood on any given day is managers taking full credit for things while the person who did that work/came up with that idea/etc. is actually sitting in the same meeting - if managers are reading this you lose nothing but merely "implying" that it was a "team effort". What you gain is some respect from your team and, to my mind equally, respect from the people you are ultimately trying to impress.

Ok, rant over. And I don't even know now if it was even on topic so, about the manager/executive asking for feedback I will say that a group meeting like that is very seldom a good forum in which to get honest and useful feedback. But then I suspect the manager in question already knows that.