The headcount growth during COVID along with the return of offshoring with GCCs was driven by the intention to speed up delivery of products and initiatives.

There are some IR games being played, but the productivity gains are real - where you may have recruited a new grad or non-trad candidates, now you can reduce hiring significantly and overindex on hiring and better compensating more experienced new hires.

Roles, expectations, and responsibilities are also increasingly getting merged - PMs are expected to have the capabilities of junior PMMs, SEs, UX Designers, and Program Managers; and EMs and Principal Engineers are increasingly expected to have the capabilities of junior UX Designers, Program Managers, and PMs. This was already happening before ChatGPT (eg. The Amazon PM paradigm) but it's getting turbocharged now that just about every company has licenses for Cursor, Copilot, Glean Enterprise, and other similar tools.