I have watched PMs actively contribute nothing to a project by entering false metrics. It really is either you can build something, or you can't and contribute nothing to the project.
Well, those managers are only there for the hype. You need liars apparently. I can name a couple of popular of software projects who went this route, and were successful because of this. But NASA?
Not always. Some of the software guys just zone out in meetings and don't pay attention while their managers and PMs do the talking. Can confirm, I wasn't paid nearly enough in that job to care about what my manager or PM said.
This all changed with Lyndon Johnson taking over, getting rid of the Germans, introducing the well known inefficient NASA/gov-style management style known from the Shuttle era, and moved the technicians out of Alabama to Houston. This was the anti-modern democratic approach.
SpaceX simply went back to the old modern style, which worked well for the US and Russia.
The trick was not using smart people, but experienced engineers in control, and not fresh anti-engineer PM's out of college. Everybody can control a budget, esp. engineers, but only engineers can control engineering problems.