Did they? Because Google and Facebook revenues are still growing and at ATH. What happened is that they decided to divert more of that juice to their investors rather than their developers.
but WFH is also here to stay, and COVID proved it worked alright. not great, but alright, and alright is usually enough. been seeing an awful lot of job ads in Croatia, for example.
if AI won't eat it, send it to Mexico City or India or Eastern Europe on the cheap. you don't need a rockstar QA team you just need them to be mostly competent, and they cost 50% less than Big US City talent.
Sure, it's a conspiracist's "they," but society and freedom have become as awful as the most obnoxious, strident, and hysterical /. poster's predictions during the DoubleClick acquisition a quarter of a century ago.
Cui bono? Is it the finance ghouls whose ideological and economic lineage continues unbroken through Nazi-advocacy, the Business Plot, and American chattel slavery? Would we face a brighter future if the late 20th century tech industry had collectively rejected the vision of a future based on a panopticon used to generate authoritarian algorithmic control of humanity?
How many acai bowls and fancy cars was the future worth? Are we all complicit, or merely automatons whose lack of agency absolves us of the moral implications of the sum of our collective purpose?
Today's media environment is an atrocious indictment of the world built upon networked computing's awesome power to transform humanity. We have the power to uplift all life in harmony with the bounteous and breathtaking miracle of our beautiful planet. We have built a world of nightmares.