> what's the endgame?

Is it not obvious? The endgame is to publish a blogpost that sounds interesting. That itself may be the reward and the endgame for the author.

Someone who has worked for 25 years would definitely have stories. I've worked far longer than that. I've got stories too. But none of the stories are as ridiculous as a "coworker" thinking that of all things IntelliJ would lead to the doom of software engineering or multimedia would lead to the collapse of an industry. I mean, what the heck! How does one even go from "multimedia" to "collapse of an industry". There is no logical connection. On the other hand, "multimedia" creates more work in the industry.

So my application of Occam's Razor tells me, surely the stories are made up to set up strawman that they can take down one by one to write an interesting blog post.

But I'll reiterate that it's a good post. I can like a post and find issues with it at the same time. I find all the strawman a bit forced which detracts from the reading experience.