I observed that too. Polled a few people I know who upgraded and they all have the same impression that they'd rather turn it off. I shared the accessibility settings with some to help them out. I haven't upgraded my main phone might have to wait a while longer.
This has to be resume driven. I presume designers at Apple have to end the year with a review to justify their salaries. "So Bob, what would you say you do here?". The answer "Well not much, we designed things nicely already, and now we're just chilling, listening to podcasts and having 2 hour lunches" is not going to fly. They want to say something like "That flashy glass thing, we did that!". Except, in this case I wish they'd all just be chilling and having 2 hour long lunches, instead of messing with the interface since they apparently managed to make things worse.