Nobody gets promoted for simplicity

Incentives: Simplicity vs. Career Progression

• Many argue orgs reward visible complexity, “big architectures,” and heroic firefighting more than quiet, simple solutions that just work.
• Simplicity that prevents incidents is hard to credit because counterfactuals (“problems that never happened”) can’t be measured.
• Others counter that in healthy orgs, consistently shipping reliable features fast does get noticed and promoted, but such orgs are not the norm.
• Some note explicit “detect issues early” criteria in promo rubrics rarely translate into actual rewards.

Framing Simplicity in Business Terms

• Thread repeatedly emphasizes: don’t sell “simplicity,” sell outcomes: fewer incidents, faster MTTR, lower on-call load, reduced infra costs.
• Suggestions: build small cost models, instrument KPIs/SLOs, and tie refactors or deletions to dollars, downtime, and velocity.
• However, some report even large cost savings lost to more “impressive” but less effective projects.

Organizational Culture and Management Skill

• Good managers/EMs are expected to understand why simple designs are better and to make that visible in reviews and promo packets.
• Many describe “promotion-driven development” and managers who equate complexity with robustness or competence.
• Several say this is worse in big-tech or heavily layered orgs; smaller companies more often value pragmatism and speed.

Interviews, Design Exercises, and “Future-Proofing”

• System-design interviews often implicitly reward overengineering: candidates feel punished for simple “just use Postgres / Google Sheets” answers.
• Others say the real intent is to explore trade‑offs; interviewers should acknowledge the simple answer, then push candidates into hypothetical constraints.
• There’s tension between testing design depth vs. rewarding pragmatic, off‑the‑shelf solutions.

AI Tools and the Cost of Complexity

• Multiple comments: AI drastically lowers the creation cost of complex code and architectures, but not the maintenance or operations cost.
• Concern that AI agents default to “add more layers” and popular stacks, amplifying overengineering unless tightly guided.
• Some see AI as a force-multiplier for good engineers who already value simplicity; others say models still lack the context needed for truly maintainable designs.

Broader Reflections on Simplicity

• Simplicity is described as a hard, “master-level” skill: finding the minimal solution, not just the easiest or smallest diff.
• Several note we are psychologically biased toward additive solutions and “serious-looking” complexity.
• A recurring suggestion: celebrate code and systems deletions, reduced dependencies, and monoliths that are “boring but fast.”