"I know the feeling working on a team where everyone clicks and things just get done. What I don’t understand is why I had that feeling a lot more in the bad old days of BDUF and business analysts than I do now."
I suspect it's the author that has changed, not everyone else. It's probably a combination of a nostalgic bias combined with the author's increasing age making it harder to get on with a typical team of young whippersnappers.
I say this as someone who is over forty and regularly falling into the "things were better in my day" trap (although hopefully self-aware enough to see it).
I'm strongly against what he wants to revert back to, but I think he has a point. Many engineers are completely lacking in leadership and strategic capability, and fall prey to a cargo-cult, new-must-be-better, buzzword-chasing careerism no different from what we accuse managers of.
He's probably seen a few teams ruined by young megalomaniacs who want to put terms like Scrum and Kanban all over their resumes because they (being Clueless, in the MacLeod / Gervais sense of the word) think it's the ticket to the brass ring.
I agree, unfortunately (or fortunately), having stuff like that on your resume can translate to more dollars and happier wife; happier life. As I get older I wonder if Social Security will be there. In my lifetime pensions have gone away so it wouldn't surprise me to see SS go away. So I'd say load 'er up! Get all the terms and buzzwords you can on there.
I suspect it's the author that has changed, not everyone else. It's probably a combination of a nostalgic bias combined with the author's increasing age making it harder to get on with a typical team of young whippersnappers.
I say this as someone who is over forty and regularly falling into the "things were better in my day" trap (although hopefully self-aware enough to see it).