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Tech's Dumbest Mistake: Why Firing Programmers for AI Will Destroy Everything
(defragzone.substack.com)
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
I'm not saying you can fire everyone, but the maintenance team doesn't need to be the size of the development team if the goal is to only maintain features.
It works for a while. Keep a few seniors and everything will be fine. Then you want new features and that's when shit hits the fan. Want me to add a few buttons? 1 month because I have to study all the random shit that was generated last week.
Twitter and Tumblr are operating on skeleton crews but are able to make changes.
Craigslist is still around even though it hasn't changed much since the '90's.
There is an entire industry of companies that buy old MMO'S and maintain them at a low cost for a few remaining players.
Southwest Airlines still runs ticketing on a Windows 95 server.
I think you'll see more companies accept managed decline as a business strategy.