lol. This is definitely not my experience. Most problems are pretty boring and can be solved with a judicious use of boring tech. It isn't until you get to a sufficiently large scale where you need to introduce these techniques. And only if they actually further the goal.
Many times the existing system is doing something in a really dumb way because the original authors were organically growing as they explored the problem domain and that puts the system into a box of thinking, similar to your LLM spitting out trash because the context got polluted, or simply inertia. So the exotic tech is introduced to solve a symptom to the underlying issue without the crucial step of reconsidering the box the system sits in. The requirements at scale are now fundamentally different and therefore the solution should be reconsidered.
If the seniors involved completely miss this step then I question the breadth of their experience because this is common when crossing a scale threshold. Being old or having worked at the same company for 10 years doesn't automatically mean someone is truly skilled and could actually mean their experience is extremely limited.