If you are working in a place that lets your team pick the sprint length each time based on how long you think it should be for the work you're doing, that is absolutely not typical.
You seem to be either taking your anecdotal experience with what was called "scrum" and projecting it back onto the spec. Or, redefining "scrum" to be what you think it should be, not what it is. Incidentally, I find nearly everyone who defends scrum does the same thing. It's a continual No True Scotsman that gets to the point where "scrum" becomes meaningless. I actually blame the Scrum people for that because there's a ton of things that are guidelines rather than rules, although the ultimate decision is with the ScrumMaster or PM, so the level of flexibility of the Scrum implementation is dependent on the benevolence of this ScrumMaster®.
I worked as a consultant for several years and have been at many different startups, so I've experienced a lot of different flavors of Scrum, and the effectiveness varies widely. There are Scrum implementations that are authoritarian hell-holes where devs are just mice on wheels, and there are some that are pretty good. The problem is, both are still "scrum." So it's a lot like saying "monarchy is good" or "monarchy is bad." Well, it depends a lot on the monarch, but the system itself gives an enormous amount of control to one (or a few) people, and then it's up to that person to divvy out autonomy as they see fit. You might get a benevolent ruler who gives autonomy, but you might not, and both fall under the system.
I’ve never had variable sprint lengths, but picking the internal is exactly how I’ve done agile for years.
The whole point, I thought, is that you’re just frequently releasing so you want some fixed interval rather than adjusting it based on workload. Pick work that fits into the time period, not the other way around.
You seem to be either taking your anecdotal experience with what was called "scrum" and projecting it back onto the spec. Or, redefining "scrum" to be what you think it should be, not what it is. Incidentally, I find nearly everyone who defends scrum does the same thing. It's a continual No True Scotsman that gets to the point where "scrum" becomes meaningless. I actually blame the Scrum people for that because there's a ton of things that are guidelines rather than rules, although the ultimate decision is with the ScrumMaster or PM, so the level of flexibility of the Scrum implementation is dependent on the benevolence of this ScrumMaster®.
I worked as a consultant for several years and have been at many different startups, so I've experienced a lot of different flavors of Scrum, and the effectiveness varies widely. There are Scrum implementations that are authoritarian hell-holes where devs are just mice on wheels, and there are some that are pretty good. The problem is, both are still "scrum." So it's a lot like saying "monarchy is good" or "monarchy is bad." Well, it depends a lot on the monarch, but the system itself gives an enormous amount of control to one (or a few) people, and then it's up to that person to divvy out autonomy as they see fit. You might get a benevolent ruler who gives autonomy, but you might not, and both fall under the system.