For technical users too. I always make a dedicated account for each phone (if I have to).

But then again I would likely opt out of Hangouts, so it’s not a problem.

It's possible to use Android as bundled with a Pixel device without a Google account, but it's a hassle because you can't use Play Store. You can use Aurora Store as an anonymous client, F-Droid for open source apps, APKs from download sites, or the like if you're so inclined, but all of those add significant effort or unreliability.

I’m actually using Aurora and F-Droid. The only reason I have a Google account on my phone is for the Wallet (though it doesn’t work for me anyway :’)

(And to be honest, things were working much smoother for me when I was on microG [0].)

[0]: https://microg.org/

I tried to daily a phone with MicroG for a while and had lots of trouble with location accuracy and speed. I tried out several third-party NLPs but never got acceptable results.