Don't Wrap OpenTelemetry — You're Probably Hurting More Than Helping

The article argues against creating custom wrappers around the OpenTelemetry (OTel) API, warning that these "simplifying" abstractions often degrade performance through unnecessary heap allocations and expensive instrument lookups. Beyond technical overhead, such wrappers increase maintenance burdens and prevent developers from mastering the industry-standard OTel API. Instead, the author recommends relying on official documentation and testing tools or using code generation for specific governance needs.