But a simple CRUD website wouldn't reasonably cost $60k and the company needed to justify to pricetag. Not saying there is a conspiracy but there is big money in politics and they wanted a piece of it.
I would likewise like to know the basis behind these claims. There have been countless instances when I've been reviewing a PR and found changes completely unrelated to the task at hand (user story or bug). One commit often has a scattering of changes that get lumped into one git add * git commit. In a disciplined world full of mindful developers, I could see this being a thing. But I have little faith this could be sustained in a majority of dev shops.
I'm not trying to be negative Nancy but realistic Ron.
You're going to have to prove there's a pattern here. Unless the pattern is companies that haven't maintained their status in their respective industries.
I have found that using a flag system works wonders. Luxafor makes a USB powered light that I have attached to my station. Green means chat me up. Red means leave me alone. I have it set to an interval of 25 minutes red to 5 minutes green. (Like pomodoro timer). Took some time to get people on board but now its great and has expanded to not only my entire team, but other teams in the org.
Note: not in any way involved with Luxafor. Was given their product by a friend.
Outdated? Probably. Its containerized though so running it is much simpler now. The simplicity in running it makes it easier to learn. Learning a tool that is still widely used in the industry is never a bad idea. That's why some people still take the time to learn COBOL.