I see this type of organization often. I wonder if there needs to be a deeper evaluation of the costs of delegation. Institutional knowledge becomes even more abstract when trained algorithms and their developers are in the mix.
We have two of our managers on this call, one of their managers, three of their engineers, and me. But I'm only there for some vague technical guidance. I don't even know the system/language they're working in.
That's 3 managers for 4 technical people, 1 of which is simply babysitting. So really that's 4 people making sure 3 people do the work right.
Everything takes months.
From the outside it looks like they have a rigorous process of estimating, evaluating, writing requirements and stuff but it's almost pure overhead.
Maybe I should try scheduling some late-night meetings with the senior guy... He's sharp as hell, but we never get too technical during the meetings because that would just confuse people.
Fortunately for me, those projects are few and far between these days, but, earlier on in my career, they were common and frequent.