Manager-driven-development is when developers start to make decisions based on what their manager wants, rather than what their customers want. You end up with people making decisions like these:

“This logic is idiotic, but I don’t feel like arguing about it. I’m just going to code it out and then go home.”

“Jameson asks for so many pointless texts changes. I hate making pointless text changes. I’m going to just add a fucking CMS and tell him it will take 3 weeks.”

“This design change is making it worse, but I don’t want to argue about it, so I’m just going to do it.”

“This meeting is going to suck if I don’t add this pointless feature that Jameson keeps asking for. I’m just going to do it.”

There’s nothing inherently wrong about making it easy for non-programmers to change things themselves. The problem is when people start caring more about their day-to-day work and their manager than they do about their customers.