I think that you are interpreting this outcome as technology-wise negative. Instead, I will offer a commercial positive: If the docs that wrote are so great, then you can hire lower skill, cheaper support staff. Training is also cheaper (because of docs). If I was senior IT mgmt or biz mgmt: That is a win.

    > never be able to grow in their role and move up to tier 2.  I'm not sure how to solve for this problem.

In the past (20 years ago), those tier 1 roles were a great feeder for the organization. Because that role touched so much, it meant everyone had a lot of perspective on the organization as a whole, and thought about support and maintenance while building new things.

It’s easy to say who cares and hire from the outside, but that organizational context and care for support is lost. People build whatever and throw it over the fence, which makes everything worse, imo. Those people also tend not to stick around, so they have no skin in the game and it’s hard to develop culture as people rotate in and out frequently.

There are always some people who will never learn, and these people are cheaper, but there are other hidden costs as you seek to optimize for low-skill workers.