The best engineers don't aim for "designing something ambitious", instead they come up with the simplest possible design

These are orthogonal.

A lot of the dissonance on HN appears to come from two groups of people talking past each other:

a) developers working at some corporation they hate vs.

b) developers working for themselves or somewhere they don't hate

"I am going to solve a complex problem" is a better goal. If you start with the goal of designing something ambitious then the design will likely end up more complex than necessary.

Orthogonal does not simply mean different.. simple and ambitious designs often run askew of each other but they can also share the same line.