Most software is no longer this self contained. It doesn’t need to be that way but often is. Around 9/11, I was responsible for a major system component that t

Most software is no longer this self contained. It doesn’t need to be that way but often is. Around 9/11, I was responsible for a major system component that turned out (shocker) to be a lot more work than anyone had estimated, so I spent the week before and the month after 9/11 working fully remote so that I could dedicate every waking hour to the component. Putting aside the lack of balance, it was the most productive I have been in my life despite the high distraction of the news in the outside world. But the last two years have been nothing like that. Some of that is my current role, and some of that is that building complex systems requires more coordination, but it also seems to me that there is some issue both around engineer depth on average (previous example, everyone was fluent in reading code and it spoke for itself) and that software these days in large companies has just so much internet-group overhead. And video conferencing is a punishment in most large companies, worse than a phone call because it seems, to me, to result in people paying less attention. I may be alone in that though.