There's no reason for engineers to be under more pressure to accept technical debt (which is what we're really talking about with the yes-or-no framing) after the end of ZIRP. Quite the opposite: right now debt is expensive and programmers are cheap, it's a good time to have high quality standards and build robust infrastructure that will position you to catch the next growth wave. It really is AI (or rather AI hype) making the difference.

the difference IMO is that now businesses have to find a product-market-fit faster. you can't spend 5 years building the perfect system. you get to spend 1 year building a system somebody will pay to use.