So our answer has to just been to hire more developers, more and more and more developers. As the complexity grows, so does headcount.

This is why I thank the stars that I am the opensource developer, focusing on linux / Python / Django development. I cross over into SharePoint only when we begrudgingly use it as a CMS for a windows 8 app or similar.

There is an effort now to write an external service bus to manage a lot of the business logic complexity that we've baked into SharePoint. With the eventual goal of having SharePoint and other resources leverage this SB and use it instead.