The biggest reason Maven has a bad rap is IDE integration. Yes, I know about m2eclipse. I like m2eclipse. I like Netbeans' integration even more.
Here's the problem. Some larger shops built tools to force Maven to work with things like RAD 7.0. It doesn't work well. These hackarounds exist to try to get Maven to behave inside of a tool they are not allowed to change (RAD 7.0). In my case the hackarounded maven builds only work inside Netbeans. Eclipse 3.5 with m2eclipse chokes something horrible.
Most of the devs here hate Maven. They don't hate Maven. They've never really used Maven.
It's disappointing, but it's not really Maven's fault. Maven worked more than fine for me in another life. Here, it's debilitating because of the IDE and the tools meant to make it usable fail to do so.