I have a personal experience that is literally the polar opposite of everything you just described. Atypical, yes, but on the other hand, testimonials about life in most other software teams describe an unnecessary mess of middle-management and bureaucratic cruft. I'm sure at many companies there are many roadblocks in the way between their developers and a better product, but my company doesn't have them. Not a startup, either. A 50-year-old engineering company that learned hard lessons after 20 years of stagnation.

I'm not going to be very sympathetic to counter-arguments about what "proper" practices we "should" follow, because quite frankly we're delivering features and value for our clients and catapulting back to the leadership position in our industry. Programming as a studied profession is barely half a century old, and the current zeitgeist of "best practice" is younger than some peoples' stints at the company they still work at. I'm very inclined to believe none of it is correct. No structural or architectural approach is one-size-fits-all and everything will be contingent on who you have and what you're trying to deliver.