Responsibility isn’t something you receive.
Responsibility is something you take — by putting your reputation and your more tangible assets on the line for the outcome, the deadlines, the quality of the work. And that’s exactly why it’s not “with great power comes great responsibility,” as Uncle Ben said — but the other way around: with great responsibility comes great power. At least in the long run. Sometimes someone is given power, but if they don’t also take responsibility, they simply break the system.
If your CTO is the CEO’s brother-in-law, he might fire a couple of people he doesn’t like, but over time some COO will pull all the processes onto themselves, take on extra load, and eventually everyone will come to them with decisions at the intersection of business and tech. Of course, that leads to nonsense like the poor COO being forced to give the CTO a sense of control without actually handing over any control — but that’s what happens when nepotism becomes the core principle.
If you want professional growth, you don’t need more tasks — you need tasks you are responsible for. The ideal scenario is to anchor some meaningful business process around yourself; that’s when responsibility turns into power. There is no title in the world that can silence a person without whom the company loses revenue. Well, within companies that actually aim to make revenue — I haven’t worked in the other types, can’t say.
And one last thing on the same topic: precisely because responsibility can only be taken, collective responsibility simply doesn’t exist. Collective punishment — sure. But it’s worth remembering that in the sense in which the word “responsibility” is used in laws or in certain ethical arguments, it’s essentially just a euphemism.