Going off this thought tangent a bit, I think many engineers could be gatekeepers because it's a pretty hard industry to get into and it's just not everybody's cup of tea. Now that AI is assisting people who wouldn't necessarily make it in the old world, it turns out business just cares about results and the gatekeepers don't matter as much anymore. It's creating quite a big split between the old guard and people who just get stuff done even if it creates 10 times the bloat.

I've always been on the get it done side to the chagrin of my peers but I've also never impressed anyone with what I've came up with so who knows.

My personal opinion is that if you don't get with the program, you're probably going to get left in the dust or going to have to split off and do your own thing where you can control what's going on but I think in general in a capitalistic society, the business just wants to get to the next thing to make more money and subpar or middling quality is good enough.

I should caveat my comment that this doesn't apply to pacemaker software and higher end software engineering