[picafrost]

Every industry building at scale makes the same tradeoffs. Manufacturers that create physical products use thinner metal, cheaper fasteners, and not-top-quality plastics. That's not because their engineers are bad but because good enough ships and is profitable, while perfect doesn't ship and isn't profitable.

A $20 IKEA chair is not "bad furniture". It's just optimized for different constraints than a Herman Miller. Most consumers are totally happy with the $20 IKEA chair.

An underrated part of engineering skill is knowing what corners to cut. I think large tech companies have structures that impose this on engineers who view this as dereliction of duty.