OK, I just found a 2017 post:
https://forum.kicad.info/t/pos-file-for-pick-place-and-kicad-default-footprint-rotation-angle/6944
Which basically says just let the assembly house deal with it. Still seems like the footprint convention should be to match generally-used orientations on feed tape.
Is pin-1-upper-left still the current advice? Anyone have assy issues due to rotation or do the assembly folks just fix it as needed?