Naturally, you may think big companies will do a thoughtful economic optimization? Unfortunately, it is not the case when management is disconnected from IT activities. While not being overly sharp sorting the technical details, cost cutting measures are presented as a «win». A saving is immediately visible, but the tradeoffs are not. Making it a regression, usually, at the cost of employee health and comfort, and long-term potential of the company.

Below is what I see purely cost-driven changes, along with alternatives.

“Lean” teams with broad individual responsibilities (scrum and agile).
Problem: employee burnout, chaos, process overhead, context switching, technical debt.
Alternative: Rightsized teams with well-defined area of responsibility of each contributor. Hiring additional employees with increase of workload.

“AI” job cuts on already “lean” teams, before employees actually became redundant. To encourage “AI” tools use (as otherwise the workload is unmanageable).
Problem: Increased task intensity, inflated technical stack per each employee. Increase of errors, decrease of quality. Unexpected work.
Alternative: Decelerate and focus on quality (not suitable for big tech, who need to create a need for “AI”). Care about the employee comfort and choice.

Selecting “free open source” technology zoo, especially visible with adopting Kubernetes with a mix of (for now) free add-ons, instead of proven, but more expensive solutions.
Problem: Greed, and susceptibility of directors to big tech advertising. Not being honest with themselves, that the solution is being chosen only due to cost.
Alternative: Considering paying for commercial software, where it makes sense. In case of Kubernetes – using virtualization, and a team of sysadmins. Having a strategy, capability for independent analysis.

It is a paradox, so many rich companies are choosing cost-cutting, instead of focusing on the long-term sustainable quality, although more expensive. They are good at convincing others of their “success”, making reduced job quality a standard. Fortunately, there are companies with understanding of true value of employee job satisfaction, with comperhension of long-term consequences.

I hope that, after the “AI” bubble, the industry will return to back to the normal way of doing things with focus on quality, and cost-cutting trend will be part of history, along with the bubble. I eagerly wait that to happen: as a professional, I want to work in a comfortable, low-stress environment, where expertise is valued and time at the job is given to realize and develop this expertise.