Howdy 👋

I respectfully disagree with Wes and Scott’s thoughts about the state of frontend engineer role. I DO think pure FE roles are disappearing.

I have personally witnessed leaders in both large and small orgs expecting FE folks to upskill themselves across the full stack (servers, DBs, caches, and whatnot), because LLMs can generate frontends pretty damn well. As for backend engineers, I think it’s fair to say they are now expected to pick up stuff that was earlier the dominion of SRE and DevOps folks. Mergers and acquisitions in engineering roles, haha.

Are you investing your time exclusively in safe bets with additive returns—eg. technical skills or in additive bets AND multiplier bets—eg. speaking, questioning, systems thinking? What’s driving you — auto-pilot calendar or intentional toil for career equity?

Based on declining restaurant sales and reduced parcel deliveries, Gergley predicts signs of weakening consumer spending in the US. That’s what he’s attributing for Amazon’s latest mass layoffs - not AI or over-hiring. While it does make sense for e-commerce companies to prepare for impending economic headwinds, it still baffles me how one of the most profitable companies on planet treats its employees as commodities. I’m sure they have enough cash reserves to survive the next ten years without layoffs, no?