[throw4321]

Not sure if SJ was to blame, but your sentiment about the commoditization of software engineering is right on target. It was industry-wide.

It's true that teams had to grow in size as software got more complex. Was commoditization the best way to do it? It certainly aggregated power in the hands of management. That was probably an intended consequence.

One unintended consequence is that tech leads and staff engineers became increasingly selected more for political than technical merit. That in turn decreased the per-capita merit of the workforce as a whole.

Post-ZIRP and post-AI, a lot of layoffs are still ahead IMO.