It's worse than "micromanaged" for that matter. PIER plans (nominally) required the applicant to do the work to become competent at this themselves, to develop

It's worse than "micromanaged" for that matter. PIER plans (nominally) required the applicant to do the work to become competent at this themselves, to develop and present a creative plan themselves, to implement that plan and conduct their entire project according to that plan. All this INSTEAD of doing their science job. All the while hoping that some perfect candidate will show up that will fit all the crazy requirements. Meanwhile remaining aware of illegal HR practices even when they could have sped up the process. So they had to become amateur sociologists and HR specialists. At least in a micromanagement situation, the PI might have submitted 3 candidates to a reviewer who would have picked one for them. But no. Now to be fair, the project leads - I expect - usually have no appetite for all this nonsense and try to cut corners everywhere possible (most likely copy/pasting generic stuff for a start and justifying decisions rather then making the "wrong" ones since they still had an interest in the project achieving its goals) but this was still a waste of time and energy from a point of view of science achieved. When I say "was", it probably still is because most of this current emergency change will be challenged in court and will need to be redone a couple times. So for now, this is MORE waste of time rather than less.