In my experience (which doesn't mean I'm disagreeing with your experience), it's not that upper mgmt doesn't recognize the value of BI - they just don't want to

In my experience (which doesn't mean I'm disagreeing with your experience), it's not that upper mgmt doesn't recognize the value of BI - they just don't want to invest in it. They want their cake without having to pay for it. It can be hard to find a place with mgmt that really understands that investing in developer velocity and good infrastructure pays way more dividends in the long term than constant short term "promise X, deliver X*0.8 to make customer think they got what they want, and repeat to get the contract". But yeah, we could complain on and on about all the problems of shortsighted management... it's a tale as old as time.