It doesn't take a genius to know who is doing the work and who is looking for every excuse to be 'blocked'.
Managers simply know that they can't hire or fire and that calling someone on their bullshit would accomplish nothing, so they say nothing.
Managers are masters of soft power. Soft power is very hard for engineering/techie types to understand, which is why it works so well on them, because they don't even understand the game they're a part of :)