Great engineers do not just write code that works. They understand why systems become difficult to change, why some systems slow teams down over time, and how to respond before the cost becomes too high.As software products, platforms, and engineering organizations scale, complexity accumulates. Some of that complexity is inherent in the problem we are solving. Some of it is introduced by our architectural and implementation choices. Some of it results from shortcuts that were reasonable in the moment but expensive in the long run.