if i can offer younger developers any advice its this: develop a visceral allergy to complexity as soon as you can and nurture that allergy your whole life until it approaches debilitating. all else being equal complexity is bad. more "stuff" is bad, period. there are dopamine triggers and corporate metrics that may indicate otherwise but they are catastrophically wrong. fight to make simpler things. sometimes you really cannot, but thats a fight you need to have and lose if thats the case...