GraphQL kinda sucks

Graphql itself has no concept of versioning so I need to go out of my way to host a different schema at a different endpoint. And god help any client that's not consistently up to date with the latest schema in all places. You want to query for new feature X only available in api v2, but your client is on api v1? Better go back and upgrade all your existing api v1 schema queries first. Or have a separate gql client for each api version, and remember to use the correct one in the correct place.

Saying "just use better api design" isn't an answer to missing maps. Maybe I am dealing with third party data where I don't have control over the schema?

Citation needed. If two components call into the same data fetching utility for expediency's sake, and that utility queries data that one or both components do not need, you have this problem. What makes that uniquely likely with Apollo?

Privacy

The main idea is that writing some code to achieve any particular effect in the system is typically easy. But writing code, that is efficient and maintainable isn't easy. So, there's a team X, which has people working on some specific system. They own the code. To them, their work isn't quite about "implementing requested features". It is about inventing proper abstractions that both reflect the logic of the requested feature and reasonably anticipate the logic of any future feature requests. They want to avoid having 2 implementations of the same thing, they want every piece of code to be idiomatic to their system, etc. And they are right thinking like that, BTW. Every new developer they get is treated with some suspicion at first, and when he learns the idioms of the system he becomes a honored member of the team X. If he fails to learn them, he gets fired or passed to another team, where he may turn out a better fit.

So, for the members of team X, they are professionals, who know how to work on the product and on the system X. Members of other back-end teams are probably not, even if they are good devs otherwise. Some frontend dev — doubly so. Some junior frontend dev coming from military or helpdesk or whatever — triply so.

So, you may think that you are a great and charitable developer, who just implemented a Feature. But to them, you are a lowly ape who made a wobbly hut out of some sticks and leaves that is going to fall down now any moment, and it's going to fall down on THEIR heads (and you will be long gone).

Worse than that, they understand, that other non-engineers (like their manager) also are prone to mistaking a wobbly hut for a Feature. And you basically humiliated them in front of these people by "solving" their problems (while in fact you created more problems). So it gets political here. In fact, because of that, even if the above is not a fair description of your work, they kind want it to be fair, they want you to fuck up, because it at least makes it easier to explain why your help wasn't a real help.

And, in all fairness, it is kinda unlikely that a guy who is new to a codebase didn't fuck up in any way, even ever so slightly. Especially if that's a kind of guy who doesn't understand why dedicated back-end and front-end teams exist.