technicallyleft

'Attention is All You Need'

If you are in a great organization that works well together, is productive, open, etc, then you can probably make scrum work well.

If you're in a bad org, where communication is poor, talent is too diverse, and you're following leadership instead of users: scrum can feel a lot like what OP suggests.

Context switching, engineers 1-deep in critical systems, having to pay attention to everyone else's BS during the many ceremonies: scrum can feel a lot like what OP describes.

I'm not sure how common the latter is, but I suspect it's more common than your experience with scrum and your organization.

I have also seen some delusional engineers that love to talk about their great work and welcome all the ceremony and chances to 'lead by example' while leaving their entire teams behind: unable to catch up and help with workload. The delusional person thinks scrum is amazing and the rest are grinding through ceremony.