In such a vacuum, someone always appears who starts doing the work of an engineering manager informally. Usually it is the person who hurts the most, a senior who sees where this is all going. He starts doing careful code reviews. He writes design docs that nobody asked for. He raises architecture questions at meetings. He tries to set standards. He does all of this without authority, without recognition, without time allocated for this work, because officially he is an IC, and his KPIs are closed tickets.
They are watching me.