Maximize stops to make sense at some point when your screen gets large enough. You can have at least two windows side by side and maybe a console below without having to sacrifice some sidebar in your IDE or whatever.

I have the habit of maximizing the browser on windows, but on most pages that leaves a lot of empty space to the sides that isn't used anyway.

Under i3 on the other hand I keep the browser on maybe 1/3rd of the screen width because managing the whole layout (not just one window at a time) is so much easier.

And the alternative, overlapping/floating rarely seems useful for me.