I've heard no shortage of stories from coworkers at big-tech or fancy startups in the past couple of years where line-level managers simply aren't able to make

I've heard no shortage of stories from coworkers at big-tech or fancy startups in the past couple of years where line-level managers simply aren't able to make the tough decisions. A third of your team is getting practically nothing done? Are you having the tough conversations that need to happen? Or do you not want to rock the boat (it might not look great on you, either, especially if your peer managers aren't taking things seriously). You're right, you can't hide forever. People do get fired. And in a couple cases this has ultimately resulted in the managers getting fired too when higher-ups realized the sheer obviousness of "they aren't doing a single thing" that was being ignored. Failures all around, but I get why one would say "we didn't have this level of complete abdication back when people were in the office" and take that as the easy solution rather than trying to make huge swaths of both their managers and employees get way better discipline, extremely quickly.