Indeed, the best build chain is no build chain at all. I've been ridiculed at work for not using node, npm, web pack etc -- but I'm not spending 20% of my time on tooling issues.
I'm interested to know who you know spends 20% of their time on tooling issues... I use node, npm and webpack pretty regularly (albeit parcel has mostly replaced webpack for me) and other than setting up some npm scripts and a tsconfig to output the right js for my node version at the start of a project, I barely interact with them.
I think it's more like 80% of time at the start of any project, and then trickles down to no time, then up to 80% again when there's a new feature/config/incompatibility with tooling.
In larger projects and in orgs, you often have legacy choices that you have to deal with, that you can't remove or spend time replacing.
