I use paru and the default is “paru” with no parameter for the upgrade. But I am on your team here: I have to Google every single time the -Q params for all the queries and I have been using arch for almost 2 decades now: “who owns this file?” “what are the deps of this package?” “Which packages are installed?” “Which packages I explicitly installed vs dependencies?” Not a single one of them is intuitive to query with the pacman command line for some reason.
I have seen another contributing factor in CS: it is really hard for the management to keep a good senior to junior ratio ie. A lot of juniors are trying to enter the workforce today. It means that during covid and shortly after the companies definitely relaxed as much as they could the geographical constraints for senior remote roles, also being senior they trusted them to work remotely not needing too much direct supervision. And now it backfires when your company is in silicon valley and you ask your senior developer from the boonies Colorado to move to an industrial concrete jungle.