Its not like the CEOs unilaterally said "we want to suck now". It's the cumulative effect of many people optimizing for the promotion process within the company and then coaching their mentees to do the same.
They should be but its very hard. It's a culture and you can't exactly order a chain of command that grew into it and hold all the levers to just he different.
I'm not lionizing Sundar Pichai here, just saying the cumulative attitudes of 10k L7/L8 is really what sets the culture.