Not trying to throw shade on the article because I think its worth reading, but also important to note that the "good times" he's describing in tech never really existed to begin with for most people working in the tech industry or doing software development generally.

I'm not going to ascribe it to "FAANG" as the freedoms he's describing existed beyond that literal set of companies, but they didn't really extend that much wider relative to the entire tech industry.

Working for a company that would be happy paying you to do things that don't pretty directly lead to expected profit was always a very privileged situation.