>All this advanced tracking/planning stuff from companies like Atlassian seem to me like some kind of weird, dystopian "C-Suite-Porn."

no matter how good the software is , the people using it can make it suck , especially something like communication software

Ive said that things like jira are all about clarity , organization and making process strict. If you dont have that then the tickets become a bunch of unproductive threads.

Also with enough determination you can turn an excel/google spreadsheet into a good bug tracker

I think their software is pretty good , but bad PMs bad process and it doesnt matter. If you managers cant decide a consistent way to run a sprint youll never be able to efficiently record and track it.

Its like we are putting the cart before the horse. Before we can create a good organization tool we need people that want to be organized.