As someone newly entering the workforce, this is a really depressing view into how bureaucracy can squash innovation.
You don't have to write something that is essentially unreviewable to end up in the scenario described earlier. You just have to work with a team that isn't prepared to learn new things and rejects thing that they don't understand.
I've been studying functional programming lately and can easily imagine being told my code is "incomprehensible" because I wrote it in a functional style instead using loops and variables.