Would some of these small companies (aka startups) survive without VC funding? Look for companies that would survive regardless of the venture capital. They will be around because they have a profitable business model. These may be hard to find in SV.
On that topic let me tell you about farms and farmers. Most farmers are millionaires and were born that way and have only gotten richer in the last decade or so. You have to know what you are doing to turn a profit. Farms are worth a lot of money. Millions. Do you have millions? If not, you get to be some millionaire's little peon. You get to make $9 an hour. You don't get overtime. You work really hard at certain times of year... 12 hours or more a day. You have to know how to drive a tractor straight. Do you know how to drive a tractor straight? Do you know how to keep a machine maintained? Where the grease fittings are? You better grease it good before you start. Otherwise some overweight red faced drunk with 15 million dollars in assets who considers you a little peon will come out and yell at you. Heck, he might come out and yell at you anyway just for fun. Cause he thinks you are a smarty pants who thinks you are just so smart. He almost certainly isn't going to help you along. In fact, if you don't have a certain look he almost certainly isn't going to hire you in the first place.
Oh... that wasn't the type of farm you were thinking of? Maybe you were thinking of a hippie type organic farm where you could hang out and smoke weed while casually picking a few tomatoes. Well... say goodbye to your $9 an hour because you won't even be making that.
If you want to try farming go get on a crew picking chilies or something for a day. They will hire just about anybody. I've done it before. Piece-rate. Cash at the end of the day. $50 if you are lucky and you will barely be able to walk.
In short... put down the pipe. Get a grip on reality and sharpen your tech skills. The field may shrink, it definitely will change, but it isn't going anywhere. You are better off staying competitive than having dreams of getting into farming.
We're talking about a completely catastrophic event that puts 90% of the worlds tech sector out of work. The residual effects will be enormous.
Sure, if you're working on some messaging app there's a good chance your SOL, but that doesn't mean software's going the way of the dinosaur.
To put things in perspective: McKinsey just released a report that 50% of work can be automated and only 5% of work requires a moderate level of human creativity. There are still plenty of peon responsibilities to hand off to the robots.
A company is looking to raise a Series B. They make a lot of money. Close to $650k per month. However, they want to grow to 100 employees to tackle a new market with a new product. Without an influx of funding they just can't get there. So they try to raise a series B round. Because investors are super cold they simply aren't funding any companies (this is exactly what happened in 01). That company can't grow, they lose out, and eventually either fold or downsize.
Do you mean tech companies, or tech companies designed for fast growth at a high risk, or something else?
I don't think all companies need a significant external investment to work?
If a company is designed to have very low expenses, and is still profitable, that is a thing that can happen I think.
I mean if you want to work for a farm go ahead and do that I guess, but I think that not all tech companies need to be startups in the "receives investment from speculators" sense?
If there is some model where they need X customers and funding to get there before it is profitable, does that sound like a sound business?
It's very telling to me that you somehow equate "90% of tech jobs" with "startups"
Oh, you mean the website that doesn't actually sell anything sector. I keep forgetting that cars, radios, medical equipment, airplanes, rockets, robots etc. (all of which contain software, and are sold on websites) are no longer considered "technology".
I hope this next bubble bursting will finally kill the misnomer "tech sector" or "tech industry". Call it the website industry or telecomputer sector or something. I mean seriously, I get to work with particle accelerators and software that does Monte Carlo calculations of the way radiation moves through the human body, but that's not "tech". Those guys building hypersonic aircraft, they aren't in "tech". Doctors crafting artificial organs, that's not "high tech" at all. No, some website/app that shows ads alongside cat pictures, that's what high tech is all about.
Sadly, I think the name will probably stick until the Next Big Thing comes along, and then telecomp will stop being "high tech" just like all the other high tech industries that don't have every wannabe on the planet trying to squeeze money out of them while the getting is good.
/rant
On the other hand, 120K a year JS developers with two years experience... there might be not so many of those sometime in the not so distant future.
As has been said, skilled workers will find work elsewhere.
Overpaid junior developers who are more adept at rattling of the latest hipster buzzwords, and subsequently rewriting the same 100 line program over and over, than actually writing maintainable code, may find the unlimited flow of snacks is about to end.
Nowadays, there's still so much demand for technical skills, you should be fine as long as you can provide value. It's easier to demonstrate as an individual contributor than as a manager.
And all the housing on firesale... will snap that right up.