I feel like “be consistent” is a rule that applies very broadly.

There’s absolutely exceptions and nuances. But I think when weighing trade-offs, program makers by and large deeply under-weigh being consistent.

I have opposite experience. Consistency is commonly enforced in bigger corporations while it's value is not that high (often negative). Lots of strategies/patterns promoted and blindly followed without a brief reflection that maybe this is a bad solution for certain problems. TDD, onion/hexagonal architecture, SPA, React, etc.