For me, it's because they move the problems into a realm I feel competent in. If I fix those issues, I get a lot of stuff for free where I have zero competence,

For me, it's because they move the problems into a realm I feel competent in. If I fix those issues, I get a lot of stuff for free where I have zero competence, and don't care to learn about. Was it Foursquare who had the huge issue a month or so ago? They had many developers worrying about how to re-shard their data because suddenly it couldn't fit into memory. Keep that problem away from me...especially at 2am on a Saturday!