I suspect in a lot of large organizations the first rule of UX isn't even make it aesthetically pleasing to users, it's make it aesthetically pleasing to PMs in

I suspect in a lot of large organizations the first rule of UX isn't even make it aesthetically pleasing to users, it's make it aesthetically pleasing to PMs in product demos. And they may or may not even interact with the software directly, or for very long. Teams will build software aligned with the immediate incentives they have, never assume those incentives are even remotely close to those that might make the business succeed in the actual market.