It would seem they don’t do a very good job teaching how to think about uncertainty, risk, and unknowns, which is what agile is good at addressing. If you want a suit to lose their mind, tell them they can only pick two of feature, quality, or schedule.

Waterfall seems a lot better when you have done something before and there's nothing to discover.

I've said this here on HN before, but the only Waterfall projects I've seen it work reliably were where:

1. The systems were small (in which case any method would work)

2. The systems were trivial (in which case any method would work)

3. The systems were well-understood by the people making them (in which case any method would work)

It does not handle large, non-trivial, or novel systems very well. Almost without fail they will deliver late, over budget, or deliver the wrong thing. This can be a win for contractors, though, who get to bid on the rework or sustainment contract for their own work.