I think there's a bias towards judging things to be "clever" if they're hard to understand

It's a cliche to have a "what idiot wrote this" outburst, then realise it's your own code, because most of us have written our fair share of "clever" code

My boss explicitly stated that he doesn't want to see any "clever" or "smart" code in our product - write code based on simple fundamentals, benchmark before deciding to optimise, and be respectful in your reviews

I like my boss a lot