The terms "over-engineering" is so ill defined as to be mostly useless.

I have a strong personal opinion of when things become over-engineered, but that means little.

I've worked for smaller companies, which tend to under-engineer due to time restraints.

And I've worked for large corporations with such overkill process that it is amazing anything gets shipped ever. And yet it does, it takes almost forever, and costs far more than it should, but it does eventually ship.

Discussing "over-engineering" may be fine for general interest communities. But I think on HN we should aim higher. I'd love to have a rigorous discussion on how we can identify designs as either over or under engineered.