> This is hilariously hand-wavey of the complexity and strikes at my frustrations between how most IT engineers see the world vs how real-world engineers do.

This has become glaringly obvious after starting to learn how aviation works and working on getting a PPL. If you know about this tech, it's interesting to ask software engineers to invent something like ILS and see what they come up with. There's a tendency to both underestimate what is needed AND overengineer the solution.