>Then think about our current era, that started in late 2022(...) We’ve flattened Engineering organizations where many roles that previously focused on coordination are now expected to be hands-on keyboard, working deep in the details

Is this everyone's experience nowadays? Personally I haven't experienced such a big shift at all.

Our C-suite is irrationally pushing AI-everything and eng culture is suffering a bit from not fully figuring out how to integrate new tooling safely, but nothing as fundamental as the mentioned changes are taking place so far.

Yes I’ve noticed this change acutely, working at a couple Series A YC startups. I’ve been surprised there haven’t been more articles on this topic because it’s been a miserable shift from my perspective, and I agree with the author that the root cause is the end of the ZIRP era.

Basically, in addition to the irrational AI-everything initiatives in spite of customers not wanting or using those features, as an engineer I’m being asked to basically run my own business unit doing everything from user interviews to product/design, engineering, QA, support, and reporting. There are no EMs anymore, everyone reports to the founders.

I think the author’s post could be boiled down to: in the ZIRP era the engineers had leverage and were treated well, and in the post-ZIRP era the tech companies have the leverage and are squeezing everything they can out of engineers to the point where you’re basically doing the job of a founder within someone else’s startup.