Cognitive load is what matters

I had the exact same experience with layered architectures like described in this article. Avoid them as much as possible, naive and simple code is often better. It might look messy on the surface, and the layered code might look much cleaner. Until you drown in indirections, that are impossible to keep track of.

It seems like some engineers have emotional attachment to all these layered architectures. Explaining or giving them examples of failed projects (based on this architecture) doesn't help.

Cargo cults