I had plenty of debates about that, and also a lot of internal thinking.

I have a theory, that raises about something that Robert C. Martin said: «Every five years the number of developers double».

I have seen not studies, but I have seen that effect for myself. I have seen how the demand doubled every five years, more or less. Basically, I saw how companies went from accepting only graduates from CS degrees, to then accept some qualifiable degrees, to accept any degree, to accept any kind of other qualification, to basically accept anything.

After that, I have seen how companies have "adulterated" developer teams, like they were creating an alloy. So, you have fewer programmers per worker, but now the developer has an army of product owners, managers, scrum masters, tech leads, developer managers, UX, QA, ... like they were to squeeze every drop of developer sweat.

The problem is that anyone who knows how to develop, becomes a developer, and the rest, just another member competing for the leadership. And somehow, they convert the developer into a pawn. The only one that really produces some actual value.

So, if we add that most of former developers that are in charge today come from Waterfall, and in that chain the boss is a god-like that knows everything, somehow, almost all actual chains of commands become empty of value for the developer. And because of it, as we say here, the developer is the last monkey, his criteria value is nothing.