I've observed the opposite: larger and higher-skill engineering departments are more likely to have the expertise and perspective to scale RDBMSes and use them

I've observed the opposite: larger and higher-skill engineering departments are more likely to have the expertise and perspective to scale RDBMSes and use them in advanced ways. It's smaller or lower-skill/fad-chasing orgs that end up doubling down on non relational systems for as the primary data store, lured in money-for-free promises of "no schema needed" and "scales automatically". Nonrelational datastores have a place, of course, but they tend to be much more niche/purpose specific in functional engineering orgs in my experience--to the point that an engineering group's ideas around relational databases (what can they be used for? Should they be the default option for new use cases? How far can they scale?) are an effective proxy for that group's skill level.