Interesting point on managers. Yeah I've seen that happen. They are highly paid, engineering team is smart, small and self reliant, So management doesn't have much to do. But that doesn't mean they won't do much. So they throw themselves full on into "process", "communication", "meetings", new agile workflow, reorganizing the team, implement new metrics etc, etc.

A lot of it makes sense from the point of view of end of year reviews. They have to say they did "something" to justify pay raises and bonuses. The sad part is that a lot of times that busy works makes everything worse.