Commit messages are immutable. Linking them to a bug ticket gives you a mutable place to record any new information about the bug that you discover in the future. (For example, that it affected more cases than you originally thought, or that the fix caused another bug.) This new information will be discoverable when starting from the original commit (found e.g. by doing a blame on a particular line of source).
To fail to do so is a gigantic missed opportunity in my opinion. You never know when you will need it.
Another way to look at it is that you’re getting to do all of the fulfilling parts of management roles (helping your team(s) to grow and develop) without the less fulfilling parts (endless meetings, budget spreadsheets, unpleasant conversations, having to give up writing code).
> These are not rookies if they reached Principal IC, but the most experienced team members ever, yet the author still feels the need to say this.
At this level the job is qualitatively different from what went before - you do start as a rookie in this role, and if you only try to keep doing what you’ve done before only better then you’re not setting yourself up for success.
> Do we need to move up or out?
Not to this extent, no. If you are still a Junior after 15 years, that’s a problem and questions will be asked. But if you want to stay in a role where you keep doing what you’ve done before only better, then that’s generally completely fine and the right choice for many people.
The other really remarkable thing about that time for me (I was working for a TomTom competitor) was that Nokia also paid a whopping US$8.1 billion (€5.7 billion) for NavTeq. This was right before Google ate both companies' lunch by switching to doing their own mapping for Google Maps using the Street View cars. The iPhone was announced about 6 months later.