I don't think it's true that it's bad for your career to do it that way. What happens a lot is we think we have to tell the story of how we gloriously implemented some powerful overkill technical stack in a startup with 4 months of runway to be taken seriously as a Real Engineer.
You can also tell the story of how you worked really hard to engineer a solution that was good enough to carry a startup to viability given the 4 months you had. I would choose the second person over the first person because they have a sense of practicality which is really important. But it can be career limiting to not communicate that in your resume somehow, so I understand how you can think it would be a bad thing. And as always you have to be aware that your employer is in that situation, and so if they don't tell you then you're screwed.
There are a lot of people out there who want to hire practical engineers. It's just a different market and you have to signal differently in your resume.
You can also tell the story of how you worked really hard to engineer a solution that was good enough to carry a startup to viability given the 4 months you had. I would choose the second person over the first person because they have a sense of practicality which is really important. But it can be career limiting to not communicate that in your resume somehow, so I understand how you can think it would be a bad thing. And as always you have to be aware that your employer is in that situation, and so if they don't tell you then you're screwed.
There are a lot of people out there who want to hire practical engineers. It's just a different market and you have to signal differently in your resume.