At face value, what you're agreeing with makes sense, and I'm a strong believer in questioning / re-affirming the "why" before taking on big projects.

But while the premise seems correct, his one example does not. FTA:

> we have an extremely long project that consumed many of our best engineers to align our data retention policies and tools to Google. I am not saying this is not important BUT this had zero value to our users.

This is a short sighted take, and ignores some of the reasons that such initiatives are often necessary (and I'd even argue...valuable). Two off the top of my head:

- Alignment with data retention policies = meet my expectations as a user about how Waze handles my data. I realize I'm in the minority by caring about this.

- Integration with standard tooling = easier for existing teams to contribute/maintain, less overhead managing disparate tooling, eventual gains in feature velocity which do equate to customer value.

So yeah, question the rationale for doing something, but look past your own immediate goals when evaluating the value of this kind of initiative.