#softwareengineering

Some senior and staff engineers operate as gatekeepers, slowing down development and saying no to most things This was a critical role during ZIRP, because: Tech companies had thousands of engineers who were empowered to do basically whatever they wanted, so without gatekeeping the systems would have fallen apart Tech companies didn’t care that much if they got anything done When ZIRP ended, the environment for this kind of engineer became much worse, since tech companies were now actually focused on accomplishing things and the “do whatever you want” era was over Like with layoffs, this shift is often blamed on AI, but it would have happened even if powerful LLMs had not emerged at all. It’s an end-of-ZIRP phenomenon