Even if the abstractions aren't pointless, there's a limit to how many levels of abstraction you can make sense of.

I've seen some projects that are very well engineered, with nice code, good comments, well named variables and functions. But, the levels of abstraction and nesting get so deep that you forget why you were digging by the time you get somewhere relevant.

What's frustrating there is that you can't blame someone else. It's just a limit for how much your brain can contain.