> people complain about not being able to handle all the useEffects, but they probably shouldn't be there in the first place

I think this is the crux of the issue. One's view of hooks depends a lot on the sorts of codebases they've worked in. Maybe the sun has always shone on you, and you've only ever worked in projects where hooks have been used sparingly and with great consideration.

You're very fortunate if so. I've seen some truly horrific hooks-enabled messes that have had to be outright abandoned because they became too complicated for anyone to understand or debug.