Could not agree more with this. Whether it is data warehousing, a maze of micro-services, or machine learning for your basic crud app you should look into whether you truly actually need it and whether it helps solve a real problem you have. A basic stack with Rails/Django and Postgres can get you quite far. This is often as much as most companies/startups ever need.
Also personally love the callout to Joe who while being a professor is consistently practical on when approaches do or don't make sense and at what scale they do.
But a basic stack can only be used for basic systems and for basic problems. And there just isn't many of these going around anymore as they've all been solved. Or more commonly nobody is interested (including from the business) in delivering something basic. They want to innovate for their users.
I'd argue the complete opposite: every company and their mother is online these days, and nearly always they're a) doing something that's been done before and b) are nowhere near the amount of throughput that would require some kind of overcomplicated setup.
No, your company isn't special, and "innovating for your users" is probably the worst thing you could do, compared to delivering a good product using established practices that are tried and tested to deliver results.
I think I'm on a different page here. If a business wants to sell an innovative product, that doesn't mean they have to have an innovative database for purchase orders.
Also personally love the callout to Joe who while being a professor is consistently practical on when approaches do or don't make sense and at what scale they do.