yep, it took Boeing a good 15 years to see the light on that subject

~1994 they signed me up for HP when I started to travel SEA-ICT; by mid 1996 when I asked about redeeming my miles (for a ticket to a conference, because my management wasn’t too keen on paying for SEA-MCO less than a week out) the travel dept said something like “YOU don’t have any miles to redeem; they’re all in the pool … but we can use pool miles for your ticket”

iirc the “employee-keeps-the-miles” policy went into effect a few months later