why would a stem work its way up if its tightened properly?
Because some fat fucker insists on resting their hands on the handlebars while riding the bike. Stems walk up steerers when the imposed load exceeds the preload hoop stress on the steerer clamp, which is usually when you ride over some kind of bump or haul on the bars at the start of a kilo. Leaving the headset compressor in place, preferably with more preload in the adjuster screw than is needed to correctly preload the bearings, eliminates this. Best practice is to tighten the adjuster screw to about 5Nm after tightening the stem onto the steerer.
Because some fat fucker insists on resting their hands on the handlebars while riding the bike. Stems walk up steerers when the imposed load exceeds the preload hoop stress on the steerer clamp, which is usually when you ride over some kind of bump or haul on the bars at the start of a kilo. Leaving the headset compressor in place, preferably with more preload in the adjuster screw than is needed to correctly preload the bearings, eliminates this. Best practice is to tighten the adjuster screw to about 5Nm after tightening the stem onto the steerer.