I work at a FAANG company on a project from a recent acquisition. The "narrative" of the startup was much like this article describes; a few rock stars knew everything and delivered sweet features everybody loved. Well, now those rock stars are gone, and we're left to pick up the large tech debt tab left over from their free-wheeling days of fast features and relatively poor documentation, code health, and testing.

I get why this happened. A startup has to deliver features now if they want to get acquired. It's a completely different mentality from the one we have now: no worries about funding, and we want to do things right in a way that will be robust long-term. Realistically, this is how it was always going to go down.

But I can't say that this is ideal. You don't want a couple rock stars carrying your project if you also want that project to be around in 10 years and can't guarantee that all your rock stars will be dedicated for life. You need somebody else to be able to pick up the torch. You want "commodification" (although I don't think it's a very accurate term; it's actually hard to get this right, not easy, but the alternative is much worse over time).