[mr-ron]

... they are getting update emails on them whenever their micromanager gets around to acknowledging them ...

You just nailed the problem here. If the process is set up that an engineer cannot create / prioritize / close trivial tickets themselves, that is indeed true friction.

[marcosdumay]

Those problems never come in isolation. If the developers need to do useless tasks for being through, the odds are really large that they also need to answer to them for management.