Comment by oceanplexian

Ironically, this article is "over simplifying" the problem.

In the FAANGs I've worked at, engineers who come from scrappy companies and implement hacks (Like the example of emailing spreadsheets around) undermine the business and will cost the productivity of thousands of people.

However, at the startups I've worked at, the folks from big companies that try to implement a super complex thing (e.g. exotic databases, overly ambitious infrastructure) The results are equally catastrophic for a company attempting to bootstrap when the complexity is so far removed from their core business.

What makes an experienced engineer is recognizing both states, understanding what works where and making the right trade-offs, usually from experience you can't fake your way through. I've seen a lot of projects that took 10-20 engineers 18 months to so we could sell something that landed a $100M contract with a customer. You see that enough times and you won't bias as hard against complexity. But of course it's situation dependent, like anything.