Tangentially, what you're referring to as "real" and "fake" problems also go by the names "essential complexity" and "accidental complexity". Essential complexi

Tangentially, what you're referring to as "real" and "fake" problems also go by the names "essential complexity" and "accidental complexity". Essential complexity is the inherent difficulty of the problem you're trying to solve. Accidental complexity is anything else that gets in the way: difficult tooling, annoying processes, useless bureacracy, etc. There's a bit more discussion here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_Silver_Bullet#The_argument https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_Silver_Bullet#The_argument