> If an org wants to fix the incentive, I think the question to ask in reviews isn’t “how big was the thing you built,” it’s “did you make the system easier to change next quarter.”

This has been my personal mission and motivation to go into management. I see my job as making sure engineers are rewarded for building the simplest thing that works.

So far the best way to align incentives that I've found is a simple policy: We'll ship whatever you want, but we know your phone number and you're on-call for your systems. At least 2nd tier on call.

It's a little mean but you'd be surprised how quickly engineers start simplifying stuff when they feel like they can't get anything done because someone's always asking questions or triggering alarms about that weird thing they built 3 months ago.

> A lot of system design interviews are accidentally training people that the goal is to draw more boxes until the interviewer nods. The more senior move is usually: start simple, instrument, set thresholds, and only then add machinery

I do the system design interview. The easiest way to fail is to over-design the solution. I am going to ask deep probing questions and you better have answers. My favorite answer is when people go "Oh yeah you're right, this box doesn't add any value, we can remove".