Duplicating the microcontroller on a project where people spend all afternoon arguing about 10 cents on the BOM is not a welcome idea. Also, the most eye-opening required course I took as an undergrad was reliability engineering. After you learn to do the reliability math, adding several solder joints to the product purely out of laziness looks profoundly stupid. Neither idea makes you look good to the old grey-beards on the other side of the table at the design review.