Man if you think 2MB is big, you should check out the size of the build product from a compiled language. And if you have an issue with nested dependencies, you've should check out the build a Python or C application which similarly require you grab all the dependencies, and then the dependencies of the dependencies, before building. That's just what dependency management is about.

If you have a frontend app that requires loading a 2MB bundle in the browser, then whoever configured that application did not know what they are doing. There are lots of ways of optimizing JS bundle sizes, and SSR is actually one of the best. With SSR, only the code that executes on the frontend gets included in the client bundle. Webpack is one of many build orchestration frameworks you could use, though honestly at this point you rarely have to actually write custom configuration for frontend applications. A great deal of standardization has happened over the last 5 years, and generally you just use a template for your use case.

As someone who has worked all over the stack, from API development to data pipelines to infrastructure to client-facing application, I find the dismissive attitude of other parts of the stack incredibly bizarre. It's a tool, it exists for a reason, and if you don't see the reason it's probably because you don't understand the problem.