On contrary I found scrum to be empowering for developers at least in my organization. Earlier, we used to have Technical Manager who provided estimate for a feature/project just based on his gut feeling which often was challenging and not feasible. But then developers needed to burn midnight oil to achieve the targeted release date. It often put enormous pressure on highly talented and competitive developers who had to cover up for less skilled developers. Now the development team is empowered to give its own estimation considering all factors. Mind you, in can lead to overestimation, but then we have experienced Technical Lead working also as a scrum master and individual contributor who is there to correct the course.

In general scrum will work best when 1. The product owner is from technical background with enormous experience under his belt in product development/architecture. The Product owner does not work alone in silos to create backlog but interacts with development team regularly to refine the backlog. In our case, the product owner is someone with 20+ years of experience who has worked in roles like developer/architect.

2. The scrum master is also highly technical person who has been working on the product for several years. In our team, the same person wears different hats as per the need like scrum master/technical leader/individual contributor.

It may not be exactly as per scrum guidelines but worked fine so far for us. Ultimately we need to look for good practices in each methodology and bend it as per our needs.