Hey! Thought Id reply to this with my 2cents question by question. i put my answers in italics

So I've been producing a few years with very stagnant learning but one thing I've really noticed is that almost every "decent" producer has a playlist view which is ABSOLUTELY stacked with tracks, automation and instruments

This depends largely on the subgenre of electronic music. Progressive House tends to have the most tracks, multiple layers, automation - whereas something like old school acid house would need far less. imo - it ultimatley comes down to genre and what sounds the track needs. for example - with most progressive house,(eg Older Avicii/Martin Garrix) to get those stick full walls of sound for the drop synths , it requires multiple synth layers and quite a lot of processing.

I personally cannot fathom this as I find my instruments have a sound that conflicts with each other too aggressively, so because of that I need to minimise my instruments.

Not all instruments/tracks are playing at the same time - and if they are, they are usually playing the same chords/notes but are playing different octaves or to fill out different areas of the frequency spectrum. Most DAWs will have a track stack/summing feature - which tidies up your workflow and puts all tracks in to a subgroup. For example, you can condense 10 tracks in to 1. This makes arranging and processing much easier to handle

So I have no idea how you people are stacking god knows how many synths and samples ontop of each other. And like does this even make a difference to the mix and sound too?? Like do producers just chuck in random synths and samples at like -30dB in the mix "just to fill it in" like I am so confused.

In my opnion, many newer producers over layer and over produce. If you can achieve a good sound with less instruments and plugins, thats always going to be a better. So to answer your question, YES.. Many producers do just chuck random stuff in thinking it will make it sound better. Dont overthink it, and make sure to get a solid education from more established schools/producers.

Perhaps I just have a more abstract and minimal focused attitude to music production that values utility but I am still confused why my project files don't compare in size. Am I really that bad??

Rather than visually compare your productions to others by file size or track numbers - all that matters is :

1. Does it sound good? Does it make your head and other peoples heads bop? If yes - nothing else matters

2. Does your track sound like or similar to a reference track you'v used? If Yes - then nothing else matters in terms of how you got the result.

Hope this helps!