Your question also hides an answer. You don't often get to chose a group of people you work with, and unlike projects that self-attract and self-distill ideal profile (like linux mentioned in sister comment), you're left with people usually not used to ye olde C idioms. With C++ it's a bit easier since it is more widespread and supports some of the idioms people get used through schools and other projects. Of course, projects (should) always dictate a certain discipline by different mechanisms, but if certain way of thinking isn't ingrained then it introduces just that much more pain to the communication layer between people.

In my mind using a simpler language should be less painful given there is less to argue about given syntax and versions etc. Take c# for example you have multiple ways to do the same sort of things.

It proves the argument as an outlier. I explained in another comment. You often don't have the luxury of selecting the group of people you work with and more often than not, especially these days, people aren't used to (C) way of thinking which just introduces more noise to the communication between people.

Maybe (and I like C, for the record), but it doesn't follow necessarily. It's possible most of those devs were attracted by "working on linux," and are putting up with the pain of collaborative C. I know there's a movement pushing for more Rust.