I fully agree that tech workers have never been less empowered. When I said that individuals have never been better equipped to pursue quality, I meant within projects they control. There will likely never be agency again at a large company.

We're on the same page about most of this, but my perspective differs in a couple of ways: - I have worked at companies that didn't prioritize quality and had unreasonable deadlines for most of my career. It's the default state of corporations with leverage over their workers. - This was getting worse before AI. Big tech was the anomaly in terms of pay, perks, benefits, etc, and they were already jointly deciding not to do that anymore around the time of Musk's Twitter layoffs. The main reason they had offered such a compelling environment was to prevent talented people from being hired by their competition, in which case they were perfectly happy to let them "play around" and focus on quality.

I find it frustrating when people imply that employment was an idyllic wonderland before AI ruined everything. AI is another step, potentially the final step, in boiling the middle class. It didn't invent poor working conditions, it brought tech workers down closer to everyone else's level.

The best move right now is to move to a small startup or start something on your own. I fully understand that this is easier said than done, when you have bills to pay and deadlines keep you too exhausted to escape. To some extent, that's probably part of why the deadlines exist.