In my unified theory of organizations, the organization is eventually taken over by the employees/"servants" and instead of serving the constituents it becomes about serving themselves.
Think Congress, teacher's unions, USPS, IT depts.
In programming it's resume driven development, playing with new toys constantly instead of delivering solutions.
The people re-elect Congress consistently. Employers reward resume driven development on the open market. UX people win prizes for how their UIs perform on high-resolution large monitors even when they will be used on mobile.
I think it would be more correct to say that management exerted greater control and deferred to the UX designers who were focused on keeping management happy as management doesn't ever go back and see whether the pretty mockup works.
It’s probably the single biggest cause of issues we have.
It’s interesting, because the one time a designer asked for my feedback before handing the design to management (the best one I’ve met, but they left the org) they hadn’t even considered it, but were all too happy to take it into account.
Did Google learn the lesson, and go back to the earlier UI? Of course not, because the Designers saw that the change was good. (Just in case anyone misses it, that last clause is sarcasm.)