• right, and I hated the initial one, and I'd usually customize it to get rid of a row
• the problem is that everything is differently sized, so it's hard to just drop part of it; e.g. I use shortcuts for bold, italic, and underline, but just getting rid of those doesn't particularly help
• really? I could've sworn it changed based on what you were doing, like editing a table or cell or something. I honestly just use Google Drive (work) and LibreOffice (home) instead because Office annoys me

clean modern design is for noobs and power users just need a list and that’s it

Modern design has, by definition, a lot of negative space, which by definition means fewer functions can fit on the screen at the same time. I certainly appreciate clean design, but the tools I use the most as a power user are fairly obtuse to get into:

• vim - my editor, and the learning curve there is like a cliff
• CLI tools like ripgrep + regex - learning regex properly is something for later in a 4-year CS degree
• Rust programming language - learning curve is basically a meme (it's not that bad though)
• favorite game is EU4 - complex strategy game with a ton of variables and numbers; second favorite: Dwarf Fortress

And other than vim and regex (learned in school), I learned all of those (and more!) after entering the workforce, some of those ~10 years after, and I'm constantly learning new tools (e.g. we use macOS at my current job, and this is my first time using macOS full-time in my career). So I don't think it's really about being stubborn, but frustration when the tools you're familiar with change drastically. If it was an option, I might try it and swap between it sometimes, but if I'm forced to use the new UX, I'm going to be pissed.

I'm not saying "tight compact layouts are inherently power user friendly," I'm saying power users are comfortable with a certain workflow and know where all their tools are, and then when everything gets jumbled, they have to go relearn everything. It's like when my MIL comes and reorganizes our kitchen, my SO and I get pissed trying to find everything again. Once you learn a compact tool, it's really easy to find what you want, whereas when a tool has a lot more negative space, less fits on the screen and you have to go find the stuff you want (i.e. click a different ribbon menu, then click the tool, instead of just clicking the tool).

That's why I think both should be an option. If you decide your workflow only needs a handful of tools, you should be able to ditch the ribbon and make a toolbar with just those tools (which includes some in the menus).