Exactly, and this is why I always try to steer teams away from "one metric to rule them all" whether this be "always fail if coverage is less than X percent" or

Exactly, and this is why I always try to steer teams away from "one metric to rule them all" whether this be "always fail if coverage is less than X percent" or "random code metric like CC is beyond limit". Reality is simply more complicated than that, and it takes experienced engineers to actively manage and balance the tradeoffs appropriately over time. Putting arbitrary one-size-fits-all rules in place is almost never the answer. Unfortunately, in some (many?) companies there simply aren't enough experienced engineers who have the time to do the active balancing...leading us back to "just stick this rule in pipeline so the teams are held to _some standard_".