In the 2010s, the mindset at tech giants seemed to be that they had to hire the best developers and do everything they could to keep them.
Not really. The mindset was actually to hire skilled developers just to dry up the market, so that their competitors would not have skilled labour to develop their own competing products and services.
Then the economy started to take a turn for the worse, and these same companies noted that not only they could not afford blocking their competitors from hiring people but also neither did their competitors. Twice the reasons to shed headcount.
It was not a coincidence that we saw all FANGs shed people at around the same time.
The blogger acknowledge that the use of the word "unethical" as a hyperbole ton drive engagement.
The real-world issue is that we need to get stakeholders on board with the idea of having to do extra work that is not required to deliver a feature. If you tell a manager that you need to spend a month rewriting a system that was just launched, they will laugh at you.