Not sure I'd call it "fancy."
I've watched corporations chasing out high performers for decades, yet still manage to achieve their goals. They don't excel, and often end up being "part of the road," as Stuart Brand might say, but they never regret chasing out talent, and also never regret chasing talent away at the interview stage.
I know that I nursed my butthurt, with a secret "they'll regret not hiring me!" thought, for a couple of years, and realized that it didn't matter one whit. One or two of the places actually ended up going belly-up, and I like to flatter myself into thinking I could have "saved them" (SPOILER: No, I wouldn't have. They just would have sidelined me, and gone over the cliff anyway, like my previous employer).
Human nature can be very disappointing, sometimes.
'“Refactoring” becomes a rallying cry instead of shipped.'
I can imagine product managers right now saying 'hey that's me' this must be true. Note that an ask to refactor rather than continually shipping fast is a sign of mature engineering and is common.
Nobody pays to think about how to make the tech stack better outside of company time. And when you try to push your hare-brained schemes, the management reaction is of skepticism of the benefits and worry about the potential risks.
Driving these kinds of improvements is a risky, thankless job, that's not necessarily good for your career.
Most people either want to work as little for as much money as possible, so they phone it in, or want to get promoted, which usually involves playing office politics.
Bad advice blogs just write vaguely relatable complaints that are generic enough to get a wide audience to empathize from their past experience. The reader is supposed to imagine themselves as the superior engineers in the story (the heroes) and imagine the people the bad engineers and business people as the villains. Stoking the reader’s ego is a classic engagement farming technique.
No compelling reason is provided, except "it has to do with startups".