The topic has been analyzed quite extensively in my small bubble of very experienced people (mostly software developers, some with management experience, but al

The topic has been analyzed quite extensively in my small bubble of very experienced people (mostly software developers, some with management experience, but also other people from various fields). We asked ourselves why so often such strange decisions are made out of management and our basic attitude was that we simply don't have the necessary information to be able to evaluate these decisions reasonably. So we gathered a lot of information, as much of it as possible directly from management itself. We have indeed found information that explains some managerial decisions, but so far only of the variety that have benefited individual managers themselves, and always with negative consequences for the majority of others. However, the overwhelming majority of what we consider peculiar (up to catastrophic) decisions are due to a combination of hubris, impostor syndrome and absolute incompetence. In one case where we could least explain the decisions at first, a manager under the influence of alcohol virtually admitted that they were not only aware of their own incompetence, but that they intentionally got rid of overly competent people so that they wouldn't make them look so bad. It's a mess.