I'm all for genuine agility but this cottage industry of developer fungibility and ritualized micromanagement needs to die in a fucking taint fire.
I don't think Scrum is that terrible for junior engineers, but it provides no exit. It's the terminal juniorness of it that has me bothered. I'm 31 years old and have been programming for almost a decade and I'm too old to work on "user stories". No, I don't mean "because of age, I'm too good to work on it" because that would be bullshit; if it needs to be done and I'm the best person to do it, then I'm not "too good" to work on anything. I mean that, at age 31, if all I have to show for my time is a disjointed collection of "user stories", no one will take me seriously.
If you're any good, programming evolves into an R&D job after 5 years: exploring new technologies, testing new architectures, building whole products and company-wide initiatives. Ideologies like Scrum are trying to take that away from us. They probably provide some useful structure for junior programmers, but they're alienating to senior talent.
I fear that michaelochurch's point that a taint fire's needed is appropriate.
