I realize that the function might probably be there which is why I posted the question at the end in the first place.
But the way in which it is accomplished is much more difficult for people like me than the simple way Max does the same thing. It's a pretty effective tool invoked with one click of the mouse.
I'm not saying that they should change Maya in general and create a Stack for the entire program just like Max, because yes you're right that is what seperates the two programs, so maybe I did not explain myself well enough.
It's entirely possible for Autodesk to add the simple ability to mask the keys on the timeline (Timeline layers)and then tweak the animation globally WITHOUT ruining anything. A button that adds a layer or a Melscript that essentially does it for me.
It would be very useful for me for instance when we do some Mocap and we want to add more squash and stretch or overshoots to the animation to give it more life.
Max does this out of the box.
I don't see how that would RUIN Maya... it's like saying when they added layers to v4 of Photoshop it was destroyed!
Perhaps I am not as advanced as others, but I too, make my living from working in Maya and anything that would make my workflow easier to do is a feature I would like to see.