I suppose so. But there are always many tools for everything. And everyone can select his favorite.
And it's really easy, and there's tons of literature on it on the internet. And it has a manpage.
The "bubble" is "most people that never used C/C++" (because outside of there, make is pretty rare despite its usefulness), and even if you've used C/C++ you are not necessarily familiar enough with it to know how to properly use it or to realize you can use it as a general tool.
Why would you expect people to magically know about (and prefer to others) a tool that's almost never used in the ecosystems they touch, or only behind the scenes?
...That may be the source of your problems if your devs are that inexperienced!
Grunt came out in 2011 and Gulp came out 2 years later with a superior (IMHO) code-over-convention approach. They've kinda been doing their thing since then.
Statements like seem to be nothing but FUD.
So the problem with choice is the number of people who also know that tool who can help you.