The gross part is that many managers think they are the key to the business, when the actual heavy lifting is done by the ICs. Their "challenging management job to make difficult decisions" requires no skill, and can be done by just anyone. When their teams are successful, it's because of their great leaderships, when it's the opposite it's because the ICs aren't following the guidelines properly or working hard enough. Icing on the cake most of them also have high ego, and are so proud of themselves for zero good reason.
A very minority of ICs are also part of the problem. They realize the power of managers and become bootlickers. Then the manager plays favoritism and that IC becomes the crucial part of the team, by "having irreplaceable skills" and taking over critical projects / critical parts of projects. And gatekeeping.
These people stay at Cisco for a long time. They have figured out the way to stay off the LR list. If you look at any other remotely modern big tech, like Google and Amazon, people there don't stay nearly as long as Cisco people do. 5 years is already a rarity. Yet objectively those companies are way more successful than us. Go figure.