The intention was that some product manager wanted their name/team to have made impact at the quarterly review.

Proliferation of middle management as a separate track killed software

I agree. Any thoughts on how to stop and maybe reverse the proliferation?

Fire the managers. More realistically, just let the big bulky companies fumble around until eventually they're outcompeted by the next generation of startups.

I don't hate the sentiment, but realistically, big bulky companies would go down in flames with much collateral damage from lobbying the government, regulatory capture, anticompetitive practices, squashing creative destruction that might threaten their dominance, etc.

cats _are_ evil indeed