This is purely anecdotal. My experience, also anecdotal, is that I've used Macs for 30 years and have never had an OS update corrupt a computer and I've never had to do a "factory reset". I always transfer from computer to computer (either directly or via a Time Machine backup) and I buy a new MacBook at least every other year (I keep separate personal and work computers also). I've never had any problems that weren't fixed by a restart or that weren't specific to one piece of software.