I think the crux of his point is really between constantly having to update state in a mutable way (with a decent probability of starvation and possibly deadloc

I think the crux of his point is really between constantly having to update state in a mutable way (with a decent probability of starvation and possibly deadlock) vs. pure functions, immutability and the async FP architecture he talked about. The advantage of the later is it brings maintainable code, and this stays true throughout the life of the code. Off course, you'll have to hire or train FPers as he mentions.