But I think a lot of developers actually build software that is used by the same people mentioned in the book/article to be more productive at doing their bullshit jobs. And they're happy about it because it feels like they're providing real value to real people.
Also, most of the "enterprise" code I've seen written in the past couple of years was written to justify some big budgets and salaries, while the actual value provided by the related projects was questionable at best.
It's just that when you're a developer focusing on solving a problem you've been assigned, you're just to happy playing with your new toy to even ask yourself if you're actually solving a real problem or that shiny new feature is just something added by someone in a backlog to justify his salary.