Outlook consumes 1.5GB RAM alone. Then Mattermost and Slack with each 1.5GB, whoops you're at 7.5 GB. Another 2GB for Photoshop, another GB for Cisco Jabber, Excel... then 50 open Chrome tabs and whoops, where has all the RAM gone?
For people working on 64GB+ workstations this is no problem but Apple only supports 32GB in the newest lineup of MBPs.
My currently open Outlook is holding onto 125 MB of RAM. I have at least 12 spreadsheets open in Excel for 112 MB.
IMHO you are wildly overestimating the RAM use of those programs, aside from the others, as they normally run (sure - I can get Excel over a GB running scripts or manipulating a large file).
omg