There is definitely a wood for the trees issue at bigger companies. I doubt there is an architect who understands the full system to see how to simplify it. Hard to even know what "simpler" looks like.
Yes. Everyone should spent the small amount of time getting some logging/metrics going. It's like tests, getting from 0-1 test is psychologically hard in a org but 1-1000 then becomes "how did I live without this". Grafana has a decent free tier or you can self host.
We need new 6xx codes. "Requests that are fine, need no redirection and have no errors but are blocked because of politics, overbearing laws or regime"
The thing here is programming the job can be much more dull than programming the hobby. Occasionally (twice a decade) there can be a collision where you get to do something really cool like that at work. The higher ups want a realistic sky because their market research said it'll boost an OKR by 10 basis points. And then you are in luck!
That said there are niches where jobs let you do cool stuff all the time. Hard to find. Probably why gaming jobs are notoriously underpaid and overworked.
Probably alignment with mission. The siblings write a lot about it so read all that. I prepped but I missed the mark. I suspect because of doing too ordinary work so I didn't have examples that would make them think "damm this person gets us".