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> It leaves the structures it touches barren and brittle

If overdone - definitely.

But there are plenty of cases where people forgot to add an index or used linked lists for search heavy stuff or issued rpc for every keystroke.

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Yes, and solving actual problems is a great way to frame a goal. People often equivocate between "optimization" and "improving things", so I don't blame you for it in particular. Optimization, by definition, requires that something be "overdone", that an objective function is maximized or minimized. Organizations with human decisionmakers aren't incapable of assessing other factors, what priorities not captured by the optimization objective might be relevant, but by framing decisions as optimization, especially throughout an organization or an economy, the pressure against that kind of sanity check is implied and grows the more "competent" an organization is

> Optimization, by definition, requires that something be "overdone"

I would disagree.

I guess word meanings differ slightly between your and my social circles.

E.g. “optimised for read load”.

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