To be fair, I see this in the US as well and IMO the problem is that we have many generations of managers that have learned about management based upon 20th cen

To be fair, I see this in the US as well and IMO the problem is that we have many generations of managers that have learned about management based upon 20th century manufacturing and military (the biggest and best studies in management come from here). My plea to management in all these stuck in time companies is to read about Deming and a reminder that even the US military has mostly abandoned the practice of command & control for missions that are more exploratory or back office related because they weren’t working when enemies were so fast moving and adopting new strategies quickly. And in fairness to your experience of lack of useful projects, many of the products people work on even at the big tech companies never get deployed or are shuttered within months (Google Wave anyone?) We need management to lead now, not... “manage.”