You're right, my gripe is specifically with code slinging that hits production end users. My background is in product so to your point, it's very unnerving to see a straight line being enthusiastically optimized for developers -> customer facing product outcomes.
This is contentious because I'm not exactly advocating for arbitrary gate-keepers. The nuance is that building usable stuff is hard. And not a matter of shipping more code. I take your point to mean well it depends on what that code is doing. If 20x more code is in a meta-harness of simulation and such to arrive at the leading candidate for what hits production, well then you've got my attention there.
This is contentious because I'm not exactly advocating for arbitrary gate-keepers. The nuance is that building usable stuff is hard. And not a matter of shipping more code. I take your point to mean well it depends on what that code is doing. If 20x more code is in a meta-harness of simulation and such to arrive at the leading candidate for what hits production, well then you've got my attention there.