Well, obviously, navigating complexity in the middle of a tech cycle is hard, and after the storm, anyone can claim to be a captain. I'd say the best we can do is stay conscious of the pattern (and how it affects you and others), engage in architectural discussions with critical thinking (especially around incentives and epistemology, as a concrete example, cloud certifications and consultants are often brought up to muddle this up in infra context), and bring technical humility and empathy into the room. Also, if possible, try to help younger engineers recognize these dynamics earlier.
It's a genuinely hard problem. And sometimes, there isn't much more to do than to engage honestly, because your own perspective can be just as biased or context-blind as anyone else's.
> It's still cool to reflect on all these longstanding general SE tradeoffs and truisms.
Yep, totally. Philosophy is always fun, even when the only universal truth is that the truth is elusive.