The whole "let engineers do whatever idea" seems like it hasn't been very true for a long while. Yet there's also no vision from above, no hooks to engage folks

The whole "let engineers do whatever idea" seems like it hasn't been very true for a long while. Yet there's also no vision from above, no hooks to engage folks well. There's been a lot of poo pooing the letting engineers go free idea, but the follow up questions of whether there's been any support, any servant leadership... is the company supporting free ideas, or is it disinterested & just letting chaos & churn happen? That's was a question. How do you both provide support & coalesceing, while also not becoming a command organization? How do you have upper levels of management that don't turn into real politick political gamesmanship? I feel like there's such a beautiful idea of anarchy that we wanted to love, and there such obvious failure now, but I feel like we went to blame the idea at large (of engineering free orgs) without spending a moment to consider it's execution & or how the org adapted or failed to adapt to this notion. Do y'all think we'll see notable winners, who again live the more anarchistic or less top down engineering mentalities again? How much has the window closed; how much of a negative impact has the legacy of Google left?