Because if you're hired as pension manager, and you just shove all the money into VTI, you're going to feel like you're doing nothing, and eventually someone will notice your job is redundant, even if you're outperforming your peers.

Relatively famously, the Nevada public pension investment manager relies entirely on indexed funds. He has one person he works with on the investment side, avoids the expenses of consultants and a large office, and maintains incredibly low fees.

He has been in the role over a decade.

And the people who hire pension managers are too stupid to see that active pension management is redundant? They haven't read A Random Walk Down Wall Street?