Well, freeing it up to compete. I expect some of the bloat is just so that someone can't work for a competitor.

You'd think so but that's at least not the impression I've gotten. At Google that's certainly going to be the case but at a company like Uber/Lyft/Airbnb the bloat ends up largely arising due to managerial bloat (managers want to grow their org to make themselves seem more important) and low technical standards for higher level ICs (which results in far more resources used to accomplish each project).

Are you saying that technical standards are lowered as one moves up the IC ladder? If so, how and why?

Technical competence isn't as well evaluated at companies like Uber/Lyft/Airbnb at L6+ especially for external hires. So it's not so much that the technical bar is dropped but that it just is less enforced at higher levels. As a result you end up with a lot of ICs that are all talk but little else. This is, of course, a gross generalization. I've worked with and know great engineers of all levels at these companies. But Uber in particular had plenty of really bad apples that got hired into other companies across the bay at L6/L7/L8.

Where does IC stands for? Probably not intensive care :D

Individual contributor (technical path as opposed to a managerial path)

Individual Contributor. Basically means no direct reports.

The fact that this term exists implies bloat and a focus on process not productivity. You may as well call them "leaf nodes".

There are programmers and senior programmers, data designers and senior etc. There are also team leads and program managers. There's basically two tracks, you either create stuff or you manage the creation of it.

They have different titles now, and there's a lot of Agile fluff (how is a scrum master not just a secretarial service and the function of a team leader not to keep their meetings focused?)

Thank you! That makes sense, I will try to remember it :)

This is just a myth.

Software has way gone out of the stage where one person keep the recipe for the secret sauce, and could change the game.

No one is irreplacable.