I guess they‘d rather get promoted or at least not fired :/

This appears to represent a failure within the company. It means the employees are more loyal to managers than they are to the product. Which means your management is failing at their jobs. I suspect for similar reasons, turtles all the way up. But I'm not sure it's surprising as C Suite execs value quarterly earnings over product. But the latter is supposed to drive the former

Gumption was branded "cowboy coding," then dragged out back and shot.

I like where you're coming from, but micromanagement is still the flavor of the times.

Then I hereby submit my vote in favor of revolt. I mean hey, they think they can replace us with AI coders and want to get rid of us anyways. But if we are just yes men and don't take pride in our work, then are we that different?