Also conflicted, but I find myself happier working with "the dumbest thing that barely works" for a first release of something. To me, this is "optimal engineer

Also conflicted, but I find myself happier working with "the dumbest thing that barely works" for a first release of something. To me, this is "optimal engineering under uncertainty". Obviously, there are limits. And maybe a difference in perspective here reflects our respective typical uncertainty. I'd rather optimise based on user feedback and with production traces than "in a vacuum". Very often I don't even know if the feature or product is a good idea or how much / whether anyone will actually use it. Optimisations usually come at the cost of some flexibility and this can hurt when there's a need to evolve the product in a direction I didn't expect (and for some reason that happens way more often than it seems like it should).