Counter-anecdote: directly questioning "scale-out fantasies" has contributed to my early departure from a handful of jobs and contracts. One place was obsessed with getting everything into AWS auto-scaling groups when the problem was actually that they were running on MySQL with a godawful schema, dumbass session management, and horrific queries that we weren't allowed to fix because they were "migrating to node microservices anyway" (pretty sure that still hasn't happened years later.)
> Being able to constructively challenge assumptions is an incredibly valuable job skill
The best people challenge bad assumption and worst bosses get mad.
Had one boss get mad that I reduced the database footprint by 94% - why?
Because he wrote the initial implementation and refused to believe that his baby, which cost so much space because of how awesome it was, could fit into 5GB.
But challenging the status quo has gotten me to where I am, so I wont stop it anytime soon :)
> Being able to constructively challenge assumptions is an incredibly valuable job skill
I would agree but ...
> good managers
... are few and far between.