If you don't want to have to talk to customers, which only one developer who I've ever worked with has actually wanted to do, you need a way to equip someone else to do so.

Same thing if you want to keep your investors happy, your counterparts in other departments informed of when they need to have the hardware to pair up with your software ready, etc.

There's definitely such a thing as too much overhead, but developers who just do the things they are interested in without considering that they are part of a larger business are the other side of the coin that you're describing.

1. If other departments need metrics/insights/visibility, why don't they go collect it? As a PM, go collect that information yourself and deliver it to stakeholders? Why does everything need to be done by engineers?

2. When engineers get measured, evaluated and pitted against each other using these activities, it breaks camaraderie. We don't enjoy these activities because we see through the management practices of rating people based on the number of proverbial TPS reports or the quality of the cover sheet or the number of story points completed - none of which are actually important to the success of business but very important to the manager who will just recycle them upwards. Do you really think people are motivated to do this meaningless work?