I used to think: "Man why did they turn tech off? There's so much undone, so much opportunity for technology and market disruption!"
But the answer is bubbles. Any time sudden money is made in anything it attracts everyone from everywhere and it immediately becomes corrupted and full of scams and old money institutions. Suddenly people aren't becoming developers to innovate but to become personally financially stable. What started out as mostly uneducated hipsters and hacktivists disrupting and improving is now academia, major corporations, wealthy heirs with their WeWork NFT companies, etc. soaking up what's left of the funds, stagnating the industry, gatekeeping it, and playing a totally different (and highly political) game than we were playing in ~2008-2016.
When the tech world came crashing down in ~2016, at that time there was still a lot to disrupt: Pre-Tik Tok, largely still pre- crypto and AI. SaaS and mobile had reached a peak, and we were ready for something new, but I had no idea what was coming lol - Trump and Hilary and politics, then Covid, and now nobody has jobs like under Bush all over again, it's all politics and it's never been worse for a person's image to identify as a software engineer. This is how it was before it was cool though, nobody wanted to be a developer in ~2003.
But it's a necessary cycle, you can't just keep pumping money endlessly, it gets ridiculous quickly. There has to be periods of on and off and extreme hype cycles to see if something might be, and like a kite or firework some of those take off and impress us, but make no mistake they're all - necessarily - bubbles! Get in while it's hot, get out before it bursts :)