About a year or two ago there was this big change. They said we are “shifting left”. A hot new trend in the tech industry where we eliminate quality assurance teams and instead the engineers test their own code.

Yeah, that is absolutely not what Shift-left is. Shift-left is essentially an implementation of TDD, and QA is still a vital component of that. I think you are right in that management used it as a scapegoat to fire people.

However, if what you are saying in the rest of your post is accurate, you need to GTFO that company, fast. It’s only going to be a matter of time before the product craters from all the vibe-coding.

It wasn’t the palantirs themselves, it was the fact that Sauron had one and used to to twist others to his will.

TOR is easy enough to set up that if you know how to install a program on your computer and run it, you’re good to go. It’s not the ideal way to run TOR, and is still somewhat insecure, but can be done in a few clicks.

Back in the early 00’s, the amount of people learning how to download pirated music safely, arrange and burn a CD with it skyrocketed. Fast forward a few years and people with no real computer skills were learning how to rip and burn DVDs.

I wouldn’t underestimate the potential of people with motivation to circumvent an oppressive system.