I believe the BA's do serve an important part of the business, but like someone else mentioned on here, they need to have domain experience or working to gain that experience. Ideally, as software engineers, we are all very, very busy (thankfully!). When the business wins a new customer or an enhancement for an existing customer, the BA's come in to clarify the customer's needs from a "business" perspective. Meanwhile, us software engineers are working diligently to keep up with the work we already have so it's nice that we have the BA's out there getting our future work ready. When the new work is defined enough from a business standpoint the engineers can be brought in to start figuring out the technical details to satisfy the business requirements. The BA's are consulted about requirements as the tech team comes up with a plan. As the project moves forward the BA's will start to focus on other needs since they won't be consulted as much as they were in the early stages. I don't know what company your with, but I'll bet you are just seeing growing pains since the BA role is new to the company. The BA's are probably still learning the domain so they aren't as effective as they will be in the future. Hang tight if you like the company. The BA's should make your life better once they get some runway.