That's a poor option to regulate from. They could just as easily have required messaging apps to make their protocols open, allowing for competition in the app space messaging over them and not facing lock in.
That sounds ideal, but hard to control ultimately. Pay and opportunities for growth are typically going to be constrained at most places long term.
It seems like it's worth identifying weak spots in your codebases where higher complexity is lying, you have sole contributors on your team, or buggy areas. Armed with the information, you can plan ahead for them. Would refactoring into a different design better manage the complexity? Can we get more team members involved in changes to parts of a system we don't have familiarity with, for redundancy? Why are we fielding so many bugs in this functionality and how do we mitigate it?
I think they're working with the premise that intellectuals are less likely to be as religious or more likely to think for themselves, leading to breaking off