It's also around that point where you start to get low and high performers that, in my opinion, the burden of productivity should shift quite a bit to managers

It's also around that point where you start to get low and high performers that, in my opinion, the burden of productivity should shift quite a bit to managers rather than individual employees. Once a company gets to a certain size, certain bureaucratic workflows and systems become far more necessary and entrenched as "the way we do business". Some "low performers" at that point, as a result of this internal dynamic and internal limitations in a business, often just have less work to do or they are limited in sign-offs to work on other projects/coordinate with other teams. At that point, the role of managing teams and individuals becomes much more important and consequential. What you often get though, is management that defers accountability as problems with individual performance with employees below them. This is, essentially, a way of ignoring how the way the company operates has changed.