Basically, the management class despises SDE worker class, and thinks of them as overhead. Recent statements by the aws head about chatGPT replacing SDEs is along the same lines.
SDEs are tools that just do what mgmt tells them. mgmt holds the decision-making and all the cards.
periodically there is a whipping (pipping) in the form of a layoff to keep the troops in fear.
in summary, the attitude of management in many large companies is that code is just work that needs to get done, and any engineer who can type on a keyboard can do it equally well (cue in ai-coder). so, the smarts is embedded in defining requirements and managing execution of said-code which resides in management.
The problem with this is many-fold. 1) it encourages a culture of top-down decision making including technical decisions and the person making designs is not the one doing the work 2) as tech evolves, the org is unable to catch up since the decision makers are the elite few.
in short, a manufacturing line mentality where the supervisor holds the cards and workers are tools.
It becomes apparent as you move higher up the IC ladder that technical work becomes slightly taboo. And it is precisely because of the attitude that the actual work is something for line employees, not them. This belief is passed down not overtly, but through gentle nudges: "you could fix that in 15 minutes, but is that really maximizing your impact?" Or the ever-present, "but how does this improve your promo packet?"
It all feels like a giant psyop on staff engs to constantly gaslight themselves into immolating themselves to the god of Impact. Little wonder they exhibit much higher rates of burnout: they're told to be responsible for things without the full range of authority.
I was $TOO_OLD when I learned that most of the actual coding on Google's systems was done by L4/L5's.