What is going on right now?

> Here’s the thing - we want to help. We want to build good things. Things that work well, that make people’s lives easier. We want to teach people how to do software engineering!

This is not what companies want. Companies want "value" that customers will pay for as quickly and cheaply as possible. As entities they don't care about craftsmanship or anything like that. Just deliver the value quickly and cheaply. Its this fundamental mismatch between what engineers want to do (build elegant, well functioning tools) and what businesses want to do (the bare minimum to get someone to give them as much money as possible) that is driving this sort of pulling-our-hair-out sentiment on the engineering side.

While this is true, the push-pull between sales and engineering resulted in software that is built well enough to last without being over-engineered. However if both sales and the engineers start chasing quick short term gains over long term viability that'll result in a new wave of shitty low-quality software being released.

AI isn't good enough yet to generate the same quality of software as human engineers. But since AI is cheaper we'll gladly lower the quality bar so long as the user is still willing to put up with it. Soon all our digital products will be cheap AI slop that's barely fit for purpose, it's a future I dread.

Well, in such a future, when people have been burned by countless vibecoded projects, congratulations - FAANG wins again! Who is going to risk one penny on your rapidly assembled startup?

Any startup that can come to the table saying “All human engineers; SOC 2 Type 2 certified; dedicated Q/A department” will inherit the earth.