> We’ve been joking about copying code from stack overflow for ages

Tangent for a slight pet peeve of mine:

"We" did joke about this, but probably because most of our jobs are not in chip design. "We" also know the limits of this approach.

The fact that Stack Overflow is the most SEO optimised result for "how to center div" (which we always forget how to do) doesn't have any bearing on the times when we have an actual problem requiring our attention and intellect. Say diagnosing a performance issue, negotiating requirements and how they subtly differ in an edge case from the current system behaviour, discovering a shared abstraction in 4 pieces of code that are nearly but not quite the same.

I agree with your posts here, the Stack Overflow thing in general is just a small hobby horse I have.

Also the Stack Overflow thing has more to do with all of us being generalists, not incompetent.

I look up "how do I sort a list in language X" because I know from school that there IS a defined good way to do it, probably built into the language, and it will be extremely idiomatic, but I haven't used language X in five years and the specifics might have changed and I don't remember the specific punctuation.