My dad worked for a major railroad from the late 70s through the tail end of the 90s.

He worked his way up middling-high in the management structure. High school diploma only.

The company got bought at some point. He says nearly all the management up to the C-suite had done actual work at the company, at some point. They promoted from within.

After the acquisition, a bunch of MBAs who’d never done actual railroad work took over. Says everything became endless, pointless meetings, a lot involving travel. Impossible to get any actual work done. The old-timers had to keep stopping them from doing dumb shit that couldn’t work.

The old timers got “encouraged” to take early retirement. And that was the end of that.

The take-over by professional managers and finance bros, rather than having professional (at the thing you actually do) managers running things, is behind it. The easy quips about MBAs ruining everything are more or less correct.