I don't think companies know how to make a good product any more. Conway's law won this battle.

I think it's that company management has no incentive to do well. So they have no reason to push this down to the bottom tier of workers who actually make the products. The feedback loop is open. They make an order, the product gets worse, the line goes up, they don't know the product got worse and they have no reason to care anyway.

Slop didn't start with AI.

The West already forgot how to manufacture things, and we are now forgetting how to code: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47907879