There are tools like create-react-app that configure complicated build pipelines for you, and there's parcel, a simple common-case build pipeline.
The syntactic sugar that we're adding to make our own jobs easier is arguably making things disproportionately more difficult for anyone who doesn't already have the same baseline level of knowledge. That includes those who are trying to learn to do our jobs after we've all moved on. That would notably have also included all of us, earlier in our careers.
I'm just suggesting that it's worth considering whether that seems sustainable in the long run.
[1] ... for relatively simple tasks. Complex tooling happens to be a very good tool for complex tasks, like the sort of professional work that you seem to be referring to. No matter how good our hammer may be, however, not every task always wants to be a nail. create-react-app and parcel are examples of excellent hammers.
I'm afraid I don't know what you have in mind as far as syntactic sugar that makes things harder for learners. Every new syntax I can think of makes JS easier to learn and use.
I'm not saying that to excuse thrash. Thrash is bad. But like..."oh, at some point you'll have to have somebody who actually understands how the thing we use to make money works"--you should have that person anyway! It's an existential threat to your business not to.
Understanding things is our job. Unless you're somewhere where understanding things isn't valued, and 1) it's gonna eventually fail, and 2) you have better places to be.
Some of us won't let go of the crazy dream that things should be simpler. I want this not because I'm lazy or because I don't understand them but because - dammit - things should be simpler.
And web browsers are very complex beasts by design, by accretion, and by necessity.
Sorry, I guess. Does bemoaning it actually help anything?