Your diatribe makes little sense. A healthy company has Product Managers in charge of each product, and in complex products its customary to break them off furt

Your diatribe makes little sense. A healthy company has Product Managers in charge of each product, and in complex products its customary to break them off further into feature sets and even markets, each managed exclusively by a Product Manager. Staff engineers are the result of having a hierarchical org where you need highly specialized and experienced people to take the lead of technical projects. What problem do you exactly see in this? Researchers focus in research. What problem do you see in this, exactly? It sounds like you are desperately trying to find something to complain about in spite of not having any grasp on the subject you're discussing.