This is broadly accurate, but if anyone feels like freaking out and quickly needs an antidote to the "high" class of sociopath grifters, perhaps could find some solitude in Wim Wenders' Perfect Days for a few hours.
While I mostly agree with the grim conclusion, I think there's an important aspect ignored that in every domain the very first and very best brands could leverage as good design and purpose: art and fun.
Remember winamp skins?
"The purpose of art is to impart the sensation of things as they are perceived and not as they are known. The technique of art is to make objects 'unfamiliar', to make forms difficult, to increase the difficulty and length of perception because the process of perception is an aesthetic end in itself and must be prolonged." - Shklovsky on defamiliarization
What pg is really writing about is enshittification, consumerism.
I 100% agree in the importance of the data model, and the examples show that it often makes more sense to start from the user's perspective of it rather than your db schema.
Interestingly AI Agents are all about disrupting the hard bounds of existing data and interaction models and it turns out the lowest common denominator is often the winner. Eg.: file system > database, grep > embeddings, markdown > pdf, generative ui > portals, computer use > api-s etc.
There simply is no need for all that abstraction / interface / infrastructure to eg. answer questions about documents or to keep track of todo lists, workflows or sending messages etc. when you have glue that can translate between the data models.
I have seen numbers come differently in JAX just depending on the batch size, simply because the compiler optimizes to a different sequence of operations on the hardware.
hr likes to box people based on what they have done before. don't work in gambling if you don't want other gambling company recruiters trying to hire you.