Based on what I found trying to debug the previous sync failures, we need to search for setupLog.Error(nil, <errorString>) and make sure we instead use setupLog.Error(errors.New()). Using nil for the error results in no log line being written. In my case, it meant completely empty pod logs.

See https://github.com/search?q=repo%3Aoperator-framework%2Foperator-controller%20setupLog.Error(nil&type=code