I've worked on multiple teams at large companies. Tech teams lead by hacker types would make sure to respect and reward technical competence, even if relationships did still matter a whole lot.
On the other hand, I've recently worked in "machine learning" teams led by academic snake oil salesmen who publish lots of papers in ML journals and have fancy PhDs. They often regard coding and technical delivery as "grunt work" and do nothing but play corrupt politics, delivering little value. I have a hard time believing the fact that they came from academia has nothing to do with that, although I guess it may be similarly bad under other non-technical leadership and impostors.
