Small teams trying to keep burn ultra low vs. giant companies might have similar technical goals but opposite staff capabilities. This is a crucial factor.
A second-order effect is how much time/energy/money you have to throw at maintenance. Can you afford to spend X% of your time on maintenance? Which technologies offer comparative advantages on maintenance cost? These are surprisingly often easy to answer, and nearly never explicitly considered!
I agree that maintenance costs are often overlooked/ignored, but I'm curious how you get answers on the costs. I've never found it particularly easy to get reliable information on maintenance costs.
Im dense enough to delete things and rewrite if they require babysitting.
Express is almost decade old, react is more than a decade old, redux is almost a decade old, Tailwind is the only new thing but that too is almost half a decade old.
Can you share your package.json?