I pick the software best for my uses and then look at which desktop supports that software and workflows around them the best.
Not always clear/clean selections possible in my situation - I've a jumble of GUI designs and frameworks used, so I favour a more agnostic desktop.
> I came to the conslusion that the DE should get out of your way and allow you to focus on your work.
This is the exact problem of GNOME; they routinely drop a lot of useful functionality, often irreversibly. So [for power users] GNOME absolutely gets in the way of the user.
Both Gnome and KDE support that. Actually Gnome a tad better as it gives you less knobs to turn an waste your time. Accept the defaults and if defaults are bad move somewhere else.