Wow... What is going on it tech? We are just 10 days in the new year and every day there has been surprise layoffs!
Unity
Twitch
Several startups
And now.. Google!
This is at the same time when stocks are almost all time high :).
Unity
Twitch
Several startups
And now.. Google!
This is at the same time when stocks are almost all time high :).
Expecting interest rates to drop later this year is big for the stock market, which runs on expectations, but doesn't matter to people borrowing money and issuing debt before then, since you cannot attract lenders at rates below the US treasury yield.
There will be demand for developers in some very specific sectors and specialities, and some legacy code support for a while, but likely most of us will be out of work within the next few years.
Some people are claiming "things will pick up again Real Soon Now, you'll see" but they are whistling in the dark.
Do you have any idea what the societal costs of such a change would be?
Even if it was due to "AI", hundreds of thousands of AI augmented developers are going to be off launching new startups writing more and more software, hacking stuff, it's not just going to end tomorrow because there is value in software and software solutions.
Everything else "AI powered developers are going to startup all the things!!!" is just hype by some poster literally calling themselves (ironically I hope) ChatGPT.
https://www.theregister.com/2024/01/08/700_it_jobs_us/
The blood-letting is still ongoing (Pixar and Discord, just talking about today).
I think the overall reason is that a lot of startups and services have been unprofitable for a while, and the zero-interest-rate environment of the past decade was the high tide that covered a lot of people swimming naked, as Buffett once put it. There might be other reasons for example SAAS platforms being consolidated into fewer and fewer big players. Long term AI will play its part - perhaps creating lots of junk code, but CEOs don't really care about long term quality these days, just short term earnings calls.
Of course there are going to be niches and things like payroll or flight booking programs that will need maintenance work from now until the end of time, and some programmers will be around in 10 years, just not as many.
Again, I would love to be proven wrong.
So that's 99% of the code base right there. X has proven 80% aren't doing much of importance.
Of the remaining 1%, 3/4ths are probably rewriting to some flavor of the week and 1/4th are developing some real feature.
I was considering agreeing that "the old Silicon Valley" was probably no more.
> There will be demand for developers in some very specific sectors and specialities
Yea....
> and some legacy code support for a while,
Well sure, we still famously have Cobol...
> but likely most of us will be out of work within the next few years.
Hmm. Uh.
> "things will pick up again Real Soon Now, you'll see" but they are whistling in the dark.
Nah, I think it'll pick up real soon. We saw inflation quickly come under control, high employment rates, wage growth, etc. It's generally a healthy economy. These giants shedding fat is probably good for juicing the rest of the industry and spreading talent around. Suck for the individuals of course, that can be very challenging to experience. But lots of people have been pretty unhappy with the products big tech has been giving, so hopefully this can put some smart entrepreneurs into the waters.
Edit: I understand it was satire.