The key is, if the 'product owner' is not the end user, they are not the customer. They are often beholden to the more senior management and are more focussed on making their bosses happy with progress reports and demonstating how well they are performing. All this, while playing a theatre of customer centric focus and high velocity.

Don't you think the blame here on the methodology is misplaced? It just sounds like a bad team/company, that'll perform just as poorly with "waterfall"

A bad team will always find a way to pay lip service to any process or workflow you throw at them and still fall back on their old dysfunctional habits.

Its never the process at fault, its the gaping disconnect between the specification of that process and the implementation.

Totally agree. Bad management will mess up any methodology and good management will make almost any methodology work. Good people will just adjust things until they are OK.

I don't disagree, but I have to think that agile/scrum with a bad company just exacerbates the pain.