No, job security is why the code base is poorly written and uncommented. Pile of technology growth (POTG) is caused by a legitimate desire to avoid future pitfalls. Above all, application devs do NOT want to be in a situation where they must use first principles to keep the app alive. What they ignore is that the benefit of an added component is 1 but the cost scales as N^2. Call it "the integrator's dilemma". POTG via the integrator's dilemma is exascerbated by easy, fast dependency managers, FOMO and willful ignorance of managers to any concern other than "ship on that date".
Yet doing everything from first-principles is not viable, nor is focusing only on non-functional requirements. The solution is engineering leadership that values code not written, dependencies not added. They wince at a big commit. Every component must pull its weight. They use every part of every component and dwell in the community of it. If they don't have time for a new community, they hire a new person who does, and they may represent a new specialization on your team.
A solid team needs 5 people. CSS and Figma ('designer'). SPA ('front-end eng'). The appservers, database and outward api calls ('backend eng'). Infrastructure and CI/CD ('devops'). Finally, you need a person who owns goals, measuring past and articulating future, and take point on user and business comms ('product'). Project management can be a part-time role of anyone on the team, but fits well with product. I do not think a single human mind can be a designer/front-end/back-end/devops role and do a good job. They just don't have time to learn and stay up-to-date with all of that, and it requires an untenable amount of context switching.
Yet doing everything from first-principles is not viable, nor is focusing only on non-functional requirements. The solution is engineering leadership that values code not written, dependencies not added. They wince at a big commit. Every component must pull its weight. They use every part of every component and dwell in the community of it. If they don't have time for a new community, they hire a new person who does, and they may represent a new specialization on your team.
A solid team needs 5 people. CSS and Figma ('designer'). SPA ('front-end eng'). The appservers, database and outward api calls ('backend eng'). Infrastructure and CI/CD ('devops'). Finally, you need a person who owns goals, measuring past and articulating future, and take point on user and business comms ('product'). Project management can be a part-time role of anyone on the team, but fits well with product. I do not think a single human mind can be a designer/front-end/back-end/devops role and do a good job. They just don't have time to learn and stay up-to-date with all of that, and it requires an untenable amount of context switching.