Some points might be valid it's really hard not to dismiss the whole article when you write things like this:

> The funny part is that, because dependency hell is so ubiquitous in Scala-land (which includes Java-land), we ended up using some of the projects that we deemed too complex for our codebase (e.g scalaz) via transitive dependencies.

First, I've just checked, there are 237 dependencies in my classpath, and it never caused me any issue. Dependency management is a complex problem, but the JVM ecosystem does a pretty good job at it. Binary incompatibilities that are specific to Scala are pretty much non-existent today outside of very specific cases.

Secondly, why use stuff that you deem too complex and then complain that it is? Transitive dependencies are just that, transitive. I have Cats and Shapeless in my classpath and I haven't found yet the need to use them in my own code.