Hacker News Reader

Standard Oil became more valuable after it got broken up (the resulting parts were worth more than the original whole). The Economist had an article about that if you want to read more on this story. And at least some of those famous tech companies are so obviously marvelously profitable businesses.

How profitable would they be if we, say, made it illegal to collect PII for marketing purposes?

It is absolutely a bubble. Many of these companies are practically printing money, which is great - until it eventually stops.

The current astronomical salaries are simply unsustainable, and there is no way that all of these companies are getting anywhere as much revenue out of their SWE's as they are putting into them.

Businesses are being told they need to become tech companies and so they spend all their extra cash on "digital transformation" and hiring people to think of things to develop or build the equivalent of WordPress using fifty micro services.

Save as you go so if (when?) it bursts you're okay :)

If you're outside of the US, it feels like you don't get a lot of the upside but you're still susceptible to downturns if/when they happen. It's not great.