Ah, yeah, just like it did for electronics repair shops /s.
Just because cycles happen doesn't mean they'll continue.
Try to find targets to sell to, in a downturn, few seek.
But that wasn't the point: sure, if nothing replaces a need for software development, you are looking at things coming back strong.
Electronics repair has become too expensive compared to new production, esp in countries where cost of labour is high. It's still going strong in poorer economies.
Electronics repair shops still exist. They want $2000 minimum, to strip down and rebuild my KT66 Quad valve amp, shipping not included (the transformers way 2kg each)
It just becomes bespoke.
This is why it's so survivable. It does not depend on any actual economic mechanisms that can "put it out of business/made it obsolete". It only suffers downturns when people who become clients, lack disposable income, or are distracted by other toys (they are currently massively distracted by promise of quick AI-driven riches).
It's like Forex trading. Never worked. Could never possibly work even if there were no scams (and there are scams everywhere). And yet it never dies, because it's in the nature of humans.
[i have no idea about large development agencies. never talked to owners of them. maybe they also never worked, or were/are merely a form of corporate corruption.]
What? Freelancing has certainly "worked" for me (15 years), and many other freelancers I know personally. It has also worked very well for the many small agencies I have worked for over the years.
I don't know what data you have, or what information informs your opinion, but it doesn't match my experience.
But what about clients? That's who i meant. Demand was never economically justified/it was never a mean of producing capital - they always spent on freelancers more than the value those freelancers created for them.
Have you seen a SINGLE successful software product built by an outsourced team and/or freelancer(s)?
Because the demand is not really economical, it never worked, thus it can never stop working. It's just a form of final consumption.
Do we really think that every single dollar spent on services of freelancers was wasted?
You need to qualify or support absolute statements that start with "never" or "always."
> Have you seen a SINGLE successful software product built by an outsourced team and/or freelancer(s)?
Yes, more than one in fact, and I have 15 years freelancing experience, and 45 years in the software field. I have seen failures too, both from in-house teams and from outside teams and freelancers. Software dev presents a lot of difficulties, which is why most projects fail or come in late and/or over-budget, regardless of full-time vs. outsourced.
I have personally worked on at least five big projects in the last few years that I would call successful, and the client would call successful.
> Because the demand is not really economical, it never worked, thus it can never stop working. It's just a form of final consumption.
All of that "never" again, as if every single business, every decision maker, has not figured out something you present as obvious and absolute. Do you really think so many companies would continue to hire freelancers and agencies if they got no value from it? Eventually people figure that out, and businesses have about fifty years of experience with software dev now.
Many, if not most, small/medium-sized businesses cannot justify or afford full-time IT staff, and even if they have work and budget they cannot attract or retain good people. Silicon Valley and the "tech" industry act like black holes sucking in most of the talent. Small/medium businesses with the Excel spreadsheets and CRUD apps and PHP and Java don't look sexy enough. Those companies hire freelancers like me, and hire out to agencies, because they have to. And outsourcing can end up costing less when you add in the overhead, taxes, benefits, insurance, etc. of hiring and maintaining a team of employees, especially knowing they will quit as soon as they get through leetcoding and get an offer from Amazon or some trendy startup.
You should talk to small/medium business owners and managers before making sweeping statements like you have.
In large companies and government agencies outsourcing has different goals and reasons, and because of that the teams and projects do frequently fail and cost way more than they should have. To give one example, the US federal government gives preference to contracting minority-owned businesses (which includes woman-owned businessed). Some of the people who run contracting firms and agencies to take advantage of that preference do a great job and hire good people. Some don't. Big corporations and government agencies don't hire those teams with technical interviews or careful screening, they hire the agency based on competitive bidding (in theory) and/or schmoozing, and take what they get. I don't work in that world (not anymore, I did for a time).
Edit: Let me define what I mean by "successful" in terms of software development for a business. It means adding value, which can take the form of reducing costs, increasing market share, finding efficiencies, improving productivity. It can also take more nebulous forms, such as upgrading a code base to more modern languages/tooling, which the business hopes will pay off in the future, or help them attract more IT/software dev talent. Small and medium-sized businesses that don't have venture funding and must turn a profit to stay afloat work like that. Startups and big companies that focus on "shareholder value" (i.e. stock price) have different goals and may just fill cubicles with warm bodies to give the impression of constant growth, or to deprive competitors of talent.
There is always work in the right niche.
I have a good friend who specialises in troubleshooting and repairing switched mode power supplies. That's all he does, he's been doing it for about 30 years, and he has more work than he could ever hope to take on.
Large corporate and government (particularly military) customers pay top dollar for his unique expertise in repairing and refurbishing PSUs from extremely expensive and important pieces of equipment for which no replacements are available.