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I took some time to think about why this saying bugs me, and I think I've settled on "it suggests you can't understand your limits".

I know it's explaining the joke, but you've blown past "clever" if you've reached the point where you can't debug it.

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When you get into team development, doesn't it become the average? So, it's not just about your limits, it's about the team's average.

Otherwise, you're the only one who can fix your code, and becomes a whole bus factor thing.

The limits of the team, even insisting on >1 person being able to fix any code written by the team, are probably much higher than the average of the team. Furthermore, the average isn't going to improve much if code is never written above it. This isn't to say go all out with the most clever code possible, or make things difficult for the sake of difficulty, but consider that it's possible to help upskill your team by showing them better ways (even if sometimes technically "cleverer ways") to write code. It's ok if something isn't as familiar to everyone initially -- exposure helps that. Do better code reviews, code walkthroughs, lunch & learns, book clubs, consultants to come in and teach something, there's lots of ways to improve as a team.

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