Death marches are caused by the people who project the image that they understand software development better than others. Spaghetti code is caused by them as well, they just pretend it's so brilliant you can't understand it. (After their departure, the RDF usually fades)

We don't need a cult of brilliance. What we do need is an atmosphere of humility. Modern software/hardware systems are of breathtaking complexity. It turns out that's simply hard for humans to hold in their minds as a whole, but we still develop software like we actually could.

For a while, we had a glimpse on what a simpler world could look like. (The early days of the web - when everything was GET/PUT/POST). We promptly proceeded to layer complexity on top of that.

And that's OK, because it gave us a lot more power. But we pay a price for that power. And every time we attribute that price to lack of brilliant people, we mostly show that we haven't even come close to understanding what it even is that makes projects succeed.

The genius myth is just magical thinking in disguise.