I suspect one problem is that the people who are high enough to be bringing in senior+ contractors have often been at the same company for a while themselves an

I suspect one problem is that the people who are high enough to be bringing in senior+ contractors have often been at the same company for a while themselves and may not realise how quickly their impression of the rest of the industry can become outdated. I had a discussion with someone not so long ago who was very senior, basically running all of software development in a tech business well past the early startup rush phase, who told me quite sincerely that everywhere did daily standups and worked off a Scrum-based process these days. This was someone who I respected for being smart and open-minded about most things, yet they had this intense blind spot about how tired Scrum and all the rituals that come with it are looking to a lot of good developers now.