Comment by nopurpose
10 hours ago
Adjacent to it are PR reviews. Suggesting simpler approach in PR almost always causes friction: work is done and tested, why redo? It also doesn't make a good promotion material: keeping landscape clear of overengineered solutions is not something management recognises as a positive contribution.
Depends on the management and whether they're involved in coding. Any engineering manager, architect, senior / lead developer etc should appreciate lower complexity.
Of course, if it's the person in charge introducing said overengineering there is a problem.
they can recognise on the informal level, but you can't put it into end of the year review document. What it will be? "Kept N PRs from introducing cruft into our systems?". Fixing or building things is much more visible, than just maintaining high standards.
Worse, to suggest a simpler approach checking existing products/APIs or even preparing toy prototype is required to be confident in own advice. This hidden work is left entirely unnoticed even by well meaning managers/engineers: they simply don't know if you knew or had to discover simpler solution.