I've expressed similar criticism towards the new Wordpress workflow here on HN in the past. Speaking with several other WP devs, the most rational conclusion we've reached is that Automattic is trying to regain control over the platform from third-party developers, and reconcile where possible the fracture between the commercial and open source variant of the CMS.

They're trying to strengthen their hosted solution, especially their new Wordpress VIP hosting, and multiple changes and optimizations they were hoping for are currently off the table due to legacy baggage which is still widely in use even by the most successful plugins around. Can't really blame them for doing so, but it's very unclear what's going to happen to the current ecosystem.

Yeah, I' leaning towards Kirby for my own projects going forward, but for my day job everybody still wants WP and the market effects of that at this point are impossible to go against because every single client demands WP.