So the solution to avoid infantilizing them is to organize through scrum, standups and sprints? :P (which is where the discussion started)
That said, it's fair to say that a lot of young people are capable of far more than contemporary culture (or management) recognizes.
Okay, the exceptions: management failures. When them who should be doing their job are too fucking incompetent to pull their finger out of their arses. Years ago I worked at one place where they had 3 home-made frameworks floating around the company. A framework was clearly needed, management just dithered, so 3 different programmers just got on with it and did the necessary creation. Triple the work done, and an inevitable political war was brewing over which one would be used. And this was a medium sized company producing accounting software, not some inexperienced startup. Oh yes, I do have other stories like this... Crap management is a curse. It's always management IME. Fuckers seem to breed like rabbits too. Yes I am bitter.