Good point, but in my experience siloed teams (often if different continents) usually don’t standardize on error messages and codes, and a vague message like “Invalid name” doesn’t indicate which layer the message is coming from.

From operations’ point of view the bug will be pinned on the owner of the service that is returning the JSON to the client/app and it’s up to them to trace it down the layers. A hierarchy of wrapped exceptions helps with that. Kind of like saying “I can’t do it because XYZ didn’t do what they were supposed to do”. So low key corporate blame game in code.

I know that the usual HN crowd doesn’t work at/know about companies that follow this, but this pattern is way more prevalent in the broader “IT” industry esp among offshore centres.