> Tech skills and tech jobs are now seen as a status symbol
Its about $$$, there's been a ton of disillusionment about all the companies especially unicorns who've taken billions in investment and still have yet to prove that they can make a continuous profit. All the ride shares, delivery apps, so many SaaS companies are all burning massive amounts of cash trying to get to a network effect and becoming an "infrastructure provider" but every time there's more than 1 and they have to actually compete it turns out they can't survive without more investor money. That and people finally realizing that the crypto industry is a den of snakes and grifters.
For the past 3 years on the Who's Hiring threads almost every other post was crypto, now its LLMs - they're the companies that are getting investments from VCs, almost purely out of hype or not wanting to miss the "next big thing".
The tech sector as a whole seems to be primarily about moving money out of legacy industries (advertising, business solutions, automation) and into knowledge workers. The thing is its also an engine for massively concentrating money power and wealth. Human labor is getting cheaper by the minute and there's a massive power and wealth imbalance. Which is ironic given how in the early days tech skills were very democratizing of earnings and power. I hope something comes along that will bring about that sort of thing again. Or at minimum maybe we can provide a basic standard of living for everyone - an iPhone doesn't give shelter.