>I just can’t compete in speed and thoroughness

I certainly know engineers for which this is true but unfortunately they were never particularly thorough or fast to begin with.

I believe you can tell which way the wind is blowing by looking at open source.

Other than being flooded with PRs high profile projects have not seen a notable difference - certainly no accelerated enhancements. there has definitely been an explosion of new projects, though, most of dubious quality.

Spikes and research are definitely cheaper now.

Maybe the bottleneck for most high profile open source is PR review and not coding?