Because, polygons, they are not.
If your best architects and engineers spend more time debugging than designing, you do not have a talent issue — you have a debt issue.
When architecture has no clear boundaries, every change turns into a negotiation with chaos.
Senior engineers get dragged into every fire because they are the only ones who can see the whole burning building.
That is not mentorship — it is waste.
Weak architecture creates three traps —
Cognitive Drag
Without a coherent mental model, every decision requires reloading the entire system into your head. Juniors cannot progress. Seniors cannot step back.
Escalation By Design.
When services are tightly coupled, small changes trigger cascading failures. Only veterans know which wires will not explode (sometimes).
Top-End Atrophy.
Your strongest architects and engineers end up buried in incident channels instead of shaping the future.
The solution is not “hire more seniors.”
The solution is architecture simple enough for juniors to own.
Good architecture amplifies talent.
Bad architecture consumes it.
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