alt Hacker NewsFirst and foremost they are humans, with a limited time on Earth.
Being a software engineer doesn't mean you want to spend you free time tinkering about your self-hosting setup and doing support for your users.
With Tailscale, not only you don't have to care about most things since _it just works_, but also on-boarding of casual users is straightforward.
Same goes for Plex. I want to watch movies/shows, I don't want to spend time tinkering with my setup. And Plex provides exactly that. Ditto for my family/friends that can access my library with the same simple experience as Netflix or whatever.
Meanwhile, I have a coworker who want to own/manage everything. So they don't want to use Tailscale and they dropped Plex when they forced to use the third-party login system. Now they watch less than a third than they used to be, and they share their setup with nobody since it's too complicated to do.
To each their own, but my goal is to enjoy my setup and share it with others. Tailscale and Plex give me that.
There is a difference between "I choose not to" and "I cannot". The thread is full of people saying Tailscale "unlocked" self-hosting, implying capability, not time savings or time preference.
Choosing convenience is fine. But if basic port forwarding or WireGuard is beyond someone's skill set, "software engineer" is doing a lot of heavy lifting.
I am not saying they are, but if it really is the case, then yeah.
As for file sharing... I remember when non-SWEs knew how to torrent movies, used DC++ and so on. These days even SWEs have no idea how to do it. It is mind-boggling.