Microsoft is not an engineering company any more. Just look at their products. They placed ads in the start menu and file explorer. Azure is one of the worst clouds when it comes to features and reliability.
Microsoft is a dying company, and they are trying not to end up like IBM, but their fate is inevitable.
I disagree with your 2nd assertion. Even engineers who are less tech lead style engineers, can gain a significant boost in productivity by being able to quickly run through POCs and build an understanding of surrounding areas of their work, so they are able to contribute more.
For eg I am able to make React changes much faster and the changes are higher quality, given frontend dev has never been my job role. I’m able to spin up test harnesses, write throw away glue code, test against large datasets, etc
Not really. Especially with LLMs. Most engineers have a backlog of reviews. I'd much rather focus on building great test infrastructure, and ways to verify test results.
No fashion forward person wears an Apple watch. Anyone, who remotely cares about what's on their wrist wears a whoop and a traditional watch.
Problem with the Apple Watch is it does too much. They should have never enabled Apps on the Apple Watch. Kept it super simple. I hope they'll come up with a new version with an improved form factor and better battery life soon.