I agree, though I'm not so cynical about it. Well-defined API contracts are themselves a communication mechanism. If I provide an API, I am declaring that if you interact with me in a given way, I will behave in a certain way. Given that one of the hardest parts of scaling an organization is the boundaries between individuals and teams, providing a structured mechanism to define system behavior is incredibly valuable.
I hated that in our monolith Java web app, any random team could come along and pepper our team's module with global variable lookups and short term hacks that never get cleaned up. Even though we see the changes often times they are urgent changes needed right now, accompanied with promises to clean up later (which usually doesn't happen).
The nice thing about a SOA architecture is that it makes it harder to do this kind of cowboy programming. Yes maybe some quick business wins are harder than in a monolith, but I think (at least in our org) the cleaner architecture pays off by letting us move quicker on a different class of product projects since there is less technical debt.
Yes. And that's okay, sometimes. To me, the difference is whether it's an organizational challenge or an organizational dysfunction. There will always be challenges inherent to operating a business—and technical solutions often play a critical part. However, if the issue is really an organizational malady that should be addressed, technical solutions probably aren't the right approach.
Well-written APIs are SLAs on steroids.