The problem with this kind of armchair economy is that you can argue both ways.

"End of ZIRP and the raise of just-say-no engineers": with capital being more expensive companies need to invest it wisely, therefore the need the judgement of the just-say-no engineer to avoid blowing it on unnecessary stuff.

I would add: Either you are an engineer that management trusts and whose judgement they value, or you aren’t. If you aren’t, you’re in a bad position anyway.

It's on stories like these where I honestly just love the HN community and the comment threads.

I was reading the article, and as it went on I increasingly thought "This is one of those articles that sounds like it's saying something insightful ('it has all the right lingo! ZIRP era! Just-say-no engineers!'), but then when you dig deeper, it doesn't resonate with my experience at all when I was knee deep in software engineering in those years, nor do I feel that it in any way accurately diagnoses the immense changes that are currently happening with AI." In other words, it sounds like buzzword bullshit to me, and in the absence of a downvote button on stories, I'm glad the community is calling it out.

I see it similarly. Companies have varying time preferences over short-term success vs. long-term success.