Often when I hear stories of billions of requests per second it's self inflicted because of over complicated architecture where all those requests are generated

Often when I hear stories of billions of requests per second it's self inflicted because of over complicated architecture where all those requests are generated only by a few thousand customers... So it's usually a question of how the company operate, do you constantly fight fires ? or do you spend your time implementing stuff that have high value for the company and it's customers ? Fighting fires can get your burned out (no pun intended) while feeling that you deliver a lot of value will make you feel great.