You really only need a single interview to find out companies care a lot about premature optimization.

They’re always asking if you’ve worked with the latest tech stacks, never if you can set up a really well optimized nginx server.

I see this as Resume Driven Development. Yak shaving is fun and at some point complex DevOps becomes necessary, but most CRUD apps benefit from a simple approach that allows high feature velocity. It's a balancing act between productivity and technical debt.

I worked for one startup lead by a Java Architecture Astronaut, and working with the byzantine patterns and build systems made adding even simple features a morale-draining slog. It killed the product.