I work in Big Tech. In the recent layoff, no software engineer was laid off within my org. But several program managers were laid off. I don't necessarily agree with that decision; they do the dirty work of pushing things forward, like doing cross-functional communication, thinking about timelines and milestones, organizing meetings and sometimes attending meetings on behalf of actual engineers. Without them, work is slower, more chaotic, and it is now impossible to ask a program manager to attend a meeting on your behalf. Guess what? Actual engineers' productivity drops.

There is bloat, of course, but there is also a reason why those tech-adjacent positions exist.