This kind of reply has become such a meme. Of course, it's always some "bigger" problem that are at the heart of disfunction. The problem is the _people_ who are often at the heart of such disfunction are usually the ones that judge their "reports" by how often they say "no, because" vs. "yes, if", typically because of some quote they read paraphrased in some internet discussion.

We typically call this middle management.

Regardless I'm not really interested in the blame game on who's responsible management or engineering. Both are irrelevant to this discussion. "Can" or "can't", as the article discusses, is an issue of leadership in a business. If it isn't there, it isn't going to matter whether the engineer says "how high?" whenever their asked to jump.