From my limited experience, I think in bigger European companies (not 10-20 people tech startups) you will have people with little to no technical background doing the domain research and the managing of engineers. I've worked in a French company which calls itself a "tech" company, but upper and middle management was purely people with a controlling, legal, or MBA background.

The engineers working there were great, but criminally underused, because you had only MBAs in product owner roles who spent their time dreaming up products or features with absolutely no idea of feasibility. Like the time one of them presented their idea that the company should "create something like Facebook" to make customers stay on the company website longer. Or the constant requests why the engineers wouldn't consider using "AI" in the company's React Native reporting app.

They were probably trying their best, but the problem was the company's culture of engineers being merely tools to execute the ideas of non-tech people. When we asked for POs or managers with an engineering background, the reply was always along the lines of "they don't know the business, so they don't understand our customer's needs".

Accordingly, it always took months even for very small features or changes to make it past the "agreeing on the requirements" phase, because there was no tech person high up enough in the hierarchy to tell the dreamers straight away that they're living in a phantasy world.

I wonder if car makers have similar problems, i.e. old school car industry guys trying to manage software engineers.