There’s a curious paradox in how companies evaluate the work you do — and it’s one of the main reasons our workplaces are drowning in unnecessary complexity.
In theory, everyone wants simplicity: clear processes, easy to scale, flexible enough to handle edge cases, understandable years down the line. Everyone knows that complexity, left unchecked, becomes a cost. Everyone says they want to avoid it.
In practice, simplicity is rarely rewarded.
A well-designed system tends to disappear. Because it works, it makes no noise and requires no constant explanation — which is exactly why it looks trivial, and why the person who built it stays invisible.
Complexity, on the other hand, is impossible to miss. You’ve seen it too: some catatonic emergency triggered by a process dating back to the Pleistocene that should require a straightforward fix — but in walks the consultant of the moment, and suddenly you’ve got diagrams, layers, components, dependencies. Architectures that look impressive in presentations, project an air of great sophistication, and either solve absolutely nothing or actively make things worse.
The point is this: removing complexity usually requires more skill than adding it, and it takes even more skill to recognise that. It’s less spectacular work. It’s also the work that determines whether a system will still be sustainable in five years.
And since — per the Peter Principle — whoever is evaluating you has a solid chance of being a world-class incompetent, they will understand precisely nothing. Simplicity isn’t the absence of sophistication; it’s sophistication’s highest form. But good luck explaining that to someone who can’t tell the difference between a clean solution and a lazy one. You’ll have them on your back regardless.
So — what’s it going to be? Next time a problem lands on your desk, will you just do your job properly? Or have you finally figured out the game and decided to put on a show?