Agile was developed to fix that, basically do the minimum viable number of meetings required to keep management in the loop while empowering engineers to make decisions about their own work. Didn't really work out that way though.

I've worked on two teams that did Agile this way. Both were the most productive and impactful teams I've ever worked on.

Unfortunately, part of those team's success was their ability to work mostly unblocked by the rest of the org. Once process had to accommodate other people's timelines and turn-around expectations, that all went out the window.

Most organizations seem to much prefer optimizing for short-turn around time over sustained throughput.

I think that comes in cycles.

We have peak micro-managements doctrines, then "just look at the big picture" reaction, then it stagnates in the middle, to go back to one extreme or the other. I think the Agile trend will go away, and there's some companies out of it already, I just don't expect this current trend to last for a half-century either.