The self-documenting nature of these tools and the ability to get many people running quickly are both extremely valuable and I don't think OP has to deal with

The self-documenting nature of these tools and the ability to get many people running quickly are both extremely valuable and I don't think OP has to deal with this issue- perhaps a smaller team or just an independent approach. In a company where you have some 5+ languages with even more frameworks, various package managers, multiple data stores, etc. you're really going to be spending a lot of time just running individual commands to set up, e.g.: PHP 8.0, php-fpm NodeJS, pnpm, redis, memcached, Nginx, Elasticsearch. In total you would have probably run or configured some hundred or more commands/LOCs yourself. You run an update and all of a sudden you're PHP service is inaccessible. What now? This happens. But automated setups typically cover this scenario already so it's just working post-update, or provide means of debugging and resolving the issue. Having some projects in the team where automation is not that great and even some where it's only halfway there, I've seen developers literally lose a full day or more just because of a system. The same thing can happen with Docker Desktop - where something like Nix which declaratively documents and defines native system resources is a significant improvement over the current Docker status quo.