The hierarchy was as such - associates at the bottom who did all the manual coding work and got into the weeds with the tech, consultants on top of them who orchestrated the work and kept the wheels moving, and managers on top of them who had a more higher level view of the system and knew why decisions were being made (partners were involved with future deals and driving the business forward). The managers who knew how the system worked had no idea about the actual code underneath it all because it was abstracted away from them through multiple layers of hierarchy. The actual code which was mostly written by 21 or 22 year olds who largely had no idea what was going on other than the fact they had to make it work or risk the ire of higher ups was a mess, unless the consultant orchestrating it all had real technical and system design chops.
I was an associate then and more often than not I had no idea what i was doing but i was fortunate to work with consultants and team leads who did. Right now, I'm a software developer akin to a consultant, with more ownership of the code but no associates to guide because all of that work has been pawned off to AI agents. I see my role gradually morphing into what the manager role was at the consultancy, where i have a bird's eye view of the system and know where the project is moving and why decisions are being made, but with a very limited knowledge of what is actually in the code.