Fair point, you are correct in your inference that there are
some bad actors in my workplace. However, I’ll argue that the fundamental dynamics of bifurcating the responsibility of quality from software leads to a steady state where all QA departments end up as a
liability shield given enough time.
This is driven by Pournelle's iron law of bureaucracy [1], which says that people who promote the bureaucracy rather than the mission of the bureaucracy will get promoted within the organization and come to dominate its decision making.
For example, in schools, administrators make more money than teachers. This is despite both groups having similar levels of education and intelligence. The reason for this is that administrators know the laws and regulations of the environment they’re working in and ensure the continuity of the organization. Despite not directly contributing to the organization’s stated mission of education, they are in charge of the organization and take more benefits from it.
Software QA has similar dynamics. A QA department may start out making good faith contributions to the organization. Eventually there are product failures, eventually leadership needs a scapegoat to show they’re doing something, and eventually QA takes the blame. People get moved, demoted, or fired. QA realizes its risk, and takes steps to mitigate it. They create a highly systematized workflow and process, adopt or introduce standards. Then assert that following process equates to good outcomes. When bad outcomes occur, they point to their strict adherence to following process as evidence of innocence.
If the process does not support the work or mission, that is a cost they are happy to impose on other functions to deal with. This is the final state until a system disruption happens.
[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jerry_Pournelle