Most of my career has been spent in JavaScript and then MuleSoft. I have only ever seen top-down authority in about 20 years of doing this, except for when I was at Travelocity early in my career.

The general perception is that JavaScript work in the corporate world is for young people who have no idea what they are doing and lack the maturity to write original solutions. This perception is common from developers who do other work, management, and developers who primarily perform JavaScript work. If I want to be creative or have autonomy to do anything more ambitious than putting text to screen I have to save it for personal side projects or do unrelated work.

MuleSoft work was just more of the same with all decisions funneled to strict silos of a select few and everybody else was just a keyboard pressing stooge.

Yes, that does sound dreadful, but what's worse is that it amplifies the personalities of people who will throw others under the bus for attention and potential rock stars who perform their most diligent work at hiding from that attention.