This is why Agile has a love hate relationship with the engineering public. For some engineers its a hindrance to dedicated work. For other engineers, they have the realism to see that many programmers need direction and direct feedback to be profitable for their companies.
The thing is, some people needed direction should not imply everyone get punished and loose any semblance of autonomy. Which is literally agile approach. Some people are issue, therefore everyone is subject to elaborate system of autonomy and individuality removal.
Plus minus subtle intra team politics that allows you to circumvent the above.
I hate being micro managed as much as the next guy, but I've also had way too many coworkers over the past decade who can't seem to just sit down and get the job done. They fiddle and tinker and explore way too much. It's helpful to do that at times but many lack the discipline to produce software without a PM to answer to. I wish it were different, but it isn't.
My current PM is great and if I found out the management wanted to get rid of him, I'd vouch him and go to war if I had to. Good PMs are indispensable, in my opinion.