There is a perceived opportunity cost from someone using a lower-tier model on their task. What if the better model did a "better" job? what if my trials and tribulations are due to model quality?

If you are used to talking to opus5.5 medium, going to GPT6.1 luna low will feel like a step down. Why would any employee take the (personal) risk?

This would all be true if perceptions matched reality for model performance and productivity.