Well, from experience I can say that scrum and a (good!) Scrum master can really turn things the right way.

Even something as simple as being the impartial moderator can be invaluable, given the borderline-autists many developers are (won’t even exclude myself there). A pointless 30min meeting can become a valuable sync up.

Apart from that a (again, good!) Scrum master can organize a lot of stuff away from the developer. The job literally means removing impediments and I’ve had the luck to work with one SM, who really took that seriously.

It’s not a management position, btw. At least it’s not supposed to be. It’s supposed to be on the same level as the devs. Unfortunately (and that’s the part where you are right), this position and scrum in general were churned through the corporate buzzword grinder so often, that it’s almost meaningless now and often enough just means pointless meetings and pointless metrics (ironically measured in “story points”).