I've come to hate the term Best Practice

I agree with this, both in the software development arena, and on a larger scale, and on a personal scale.

On a personal scale, following "best practices" means you're indistinguishable from a host of other programmers. One would have done C++ with all the "virtual" and constructors and friends in 2000. One would have done Java with all its ceremony and boilerplate in 2010, etc etc. There would be no way for an employer to tell you apart from anyone else. Now that I think of it, that might be the reason employers want "best practice" following programmers - it commodifies what is otherwise a variegated population.

On a larger scale, stringent "best practices", just means making exactly the same mistakes as everyone else. This may be a good way to avoid blame, but you're still making the mistakes.