The bubble has popped for unprofitable software companies

Honestly, all the companies listed are not at risk of default - overpriced, yes, but when they rebalance their budgets to stop growing (because they don't have any more cash to burn, so they can't continue to grow, so their valuation lowers, so their stocks crash) - they will end up joining the ever growing pile of mediocre software companies with moderately large revenue caps.

The only difference is that they will have redistributed wealth - the losses from the stock crashing and stock options becoming worthless magically appearing as gains for the VCs and founders in the crazy time-travelling payout scheme that is the venture equity system.

It's a twisted look into what has driven upper middle class modern society for the past 20 years, and the software world is an especially pristine microcosm of it.

You have developers, who are one of the top paid professions in the world, who classify as upper middle class no matter where they live in the world, who rant the most about being undervalued and underpaid instead of being grateful for the privilege of their income and status. I should know, because I used to think like that too.

The belief that you're underpaid results in a mindset, an ego - an inability to "sell yourself short".

This is the culture of the upper middle class. Building a small, profitable business is selling yourself short. Not getting rich quick is selling yourself short. After all, why build a million dollar business when you can build a billion dollar one?

Behind the scenes, this sentiment is fueled by investors who need people to spearhead their high risk, high reward investment plays - high risk for those people, high reward for themselves, of course.

And its true - some people do get really rich. But, like a casino, the odds are always stacked against you. Once you realize this, you realize that you're stuck in a growth mindset, but the growth you are compelled to do is not your own, it's the collective society's desire to grow, and you're just swept up in it. And the increasing magnitude and difficulty of it makes you weary.

If "growth" is the defining word that encapsulates the past 20 years, "sustainability" should be the defining word that sums the next 20.

DHH writes about a sustainability mindset as it relates to business and work, but once sustainability as a concept embeds embeds itself into your worldview, it makes you rethink a lot of things, not just work and business.

A sustainability mindset is part of the antidote to the weariness of a growth mindset.