Programming

I feel like a lot of the issue is that software engineers used to be subsidized by both investors propping up unsustainable business models and extremely invasive targeted advertising, and both of those things are either phasing out or being legislated away. A lot of the tracking and advertising practices that kept services like Facebook and Gmail free are illegal now (rightfully so), and investors are starting to realize that not everything is going to become profitable just by having an app.

I think the solution is probably two fold. First, I think the government should invest more into open source software. A lot of the work that keeps the internet running is done by unpaid volunteers. And second, I think we need to go back to paying for services. Giving away services for free because you use them to spy on your users is just an unethical business model. It’s profitable, but so is child labor.

If you hear about a job being in demand, then it's too late to get into it, those news will always only be good for those who are already in the field, by the time you make it through 5 years of uni, you will be competing against hordes of people who did the same in a demand bubble that's bursting or deflating.

Right now cybersecurity seems to be having a soft boom, if you're in it you're good, take it easy and maybe do a cert and diversify skillset, if you're not, don't bother.

Same with data science/ML which I would assume is going to have a large boom soon (or already had? Last I remember anyone talking about it was Cloud™️ Big Data™️ days, far pre-LLM/GenAI craze ATM.)

Apparently it's hard to get hired in software. Meanwhile, some of the worst software ever made is being written today. Have you tried using literally any software recently? We're in this "barely good enough to function while being heavily supplemented by tech support" phase. I guess capitalism breeds incompetence as long as it's still profitable?

Business Insider? Really?

We're in a "fuck around" cycle where they pretend that the problem was we didn't have "copilot", and not that all of our development managers are wildly unqualified.

The "find out" part comes next.

Which is fucking impossible to fathom, because my fucking grocery store's app can't even implement search reliably, today.

I'm not sure how they're going to manage to make things worse.

Actually, I'll make a guess. My guess is we will go under the critical skill level needed for building safe hospital equipment, and we will get a rash of that stuff killing people due to lack of programmer skills.

I hope the asshole CEOs are the ones that die, but there's not enough karma in the world for that.