This resonates with me. And I think I know why software is like this. It isn't software that drives people insane, it's money that drives people insane. Specifically the promise of money breaks people's brains. They see the unicorn companies turning junior engineers into overnight millionaires, and they start salivating. They start looking for The Way. The closest thing they find to The Way is a bunch of unicorns and FAANG companies that have gone before. They start looking for talismans and ceremonies that will bring them closer to The Way. Scrum, Agile, Kanban, scalability, "web scale", 12 Factor Methodology, microservices, etc. may be good ideas but they take on real power when they're a perceived path to fortune.