Your message really needs context otherwise it's just a random rant. BTW no-one is deploying managers out of thin air. At least not in startups. What I can oft

Your message really needs context otherwise it's just a random rant. BTW no-one is deploying managers out of thin air. At least not in startups. What I can often see instead is that someone in the higher-ups needs OKRs, and he also wants to know your performance (and also others' on the team) so that he can decide who deserves a salary raise, and he would like to read a summary report about the highest priority project's progress during last week. Plus he would like someone to represent the team's technical standpoint next week when meeting a prospective client, plus he needs someone who goes around the team and asks what bothers them and what would the team like to see changed in their work environment, plus he also needs someone who hires new team members, plus he would also like to organize the mentoring of the junior members and would like to see someone be involved in the product roadmap discussions from the engineering side to make strategic decisions, plus he wants to build a new team and he wants to understand who would be the best candidate to participate in it, etc. The list goes on and on. So who will do all these things? Most devs absolutely hate doing these things because it's not technical enough for their fastidious taste. Designers and PMs OTOH have no technical knowledge to make strategic engineering decisions on higher level than the individual level (and not even on the individual level many times).