Don't ignore the context here. These are people hired to develop software for a company. They have an obligation to do so efficiently, with sufficient quality, and while balancing the company's short term and longer term business needs.
I think it's great that software development has been opened up by LLMs. Everyone should at least try it, IMO.
But your company's source isn't your personal playground and you shouldn't treat it as such.
I agree that a company’s codebase isn’t a playground and I know+feel those obligations.
My reaction is more to the broader tone of some of these discussions. In my experience engineering cultures can become quite dogmatic or obstructive, and that can block improvements just as much as the opposite problem.
At our definitely-non-Meta-scale, we’ve been experimenting with letting more of the team get their own PRs up with LLM help. Overall it’s been pretty transformative. Interestingly, people tend to work on QoL and polish improvements that many SWE workflows often don’t prioritise or have time for.
There are outliers of course, but we learn, revert, and move on. If the outcome somewhere like Meta is PMs building nonsense, that feels more like a deeper systemic issue than something inherent to opening up the codebase.
There's a reason engineers tend to be dogmatic about things. It doesn't just come from nowhere. Is it misguided sometimes? Yes. But far more often than not, there are very good reasons why those with experience seem "dogmatic and obstructive".