> I've been saying for decades that benchmarks are almost always meaningless

I find this statement egregious: benchmarks are probably the most important thing in producing quality software and are often (outside of FAANG) the first thing to be ignored. I have the displeasure of working with extremely poor software for the majority of my career, where a simple benchmark and brain-power would illuminate the issues days-weeks-months before production issues occurred.

I also see "benchmarks are useless" used a lot by vendors who perform poorly in said benchmarks. Or use useless benchmarks (like TTFB which can easily be fudged) which is just underhanded.