Not the author, but I'm a VP of Eng, and one of my sub-orgs is QA. Here's my take...
Aside from writing end-to-end test automation, the best SDETs add value in many other ways. They triage bugs, use their deep product understanding (frequently the best on the team) to refine requirements and build test plans, coordinate bug-bashes and large scale releases, measure and report on quality metrics, and much more. All of this takes considerable load off other members of the team (SWEs, PMs, EMs, etc), allows the whole group to ship with much higher confidence, and increases the number of defects caught before making it to production.
If you have an organization where end-to-end tests are easy to write and very quick to execute, then I think the need for QA folks is greatly reduced. In my experience, once there's enough complexity and scale to a product, it's basically impossible to have a rapid TDD loop with enough end-to-end coverage that allows devs to ship features with perfect confidence. Combine that with all the other "hats" QA folks wear, and I think it's is a role that pays dividends in product quality and the efficiency of others across the org.
I think it’s a good takeaway for something that’s sold once on an app store. If it’s junk, the rankings will tank it, and it may never recover from that. There are a few instances of games that have turned things around after the initial launch, like “No Man’s Sky”, but that’s quite rare.
Take Half-Life as an example. The team realized it wasn’t great after multiple years of development, and ended up essentially rebuilding it over the course of another year or two. To quote Gabe Newell, “Late is just for a little while. Suck is forever.”
Your take is spot on for SaaS apps and enterprise software that’s subscription based: ship early, ship often, and iterate fast.
Aside from writing end-to-end test automation, the best SDETs add value in many other ways. They triage bugs, use their deep product understanding (frequently the best on the team) to refine requirements and build test plans, coordinate bug-bashes and large scale releases, measure and report on quality metrics, and much more. All of this takes considerable load off other members of the team (SWEs, PMs, EMs, etc), allows the whole group to ship with much higher confidence, and increases the number of defects caught before making it to production.
If you have an organization where end-to-end tests are easy to write and very quick to execute, then I think the need for QA folks is greatly reduced. In my experience, once there's enough complexity and scale to a product, it's basically impossible to have a rapid TDD loop with enough end-to-end coverage that allows devs to ship features with perfect confidence. Combine that with all the other "hats" QA folks wear, and I think it's is a role that pays dividends in product quality and the efficiency of others across the org.