While there will definitely be downturns and upswings in the future I doubt we see the kind of tech wasteland that we saw from 2002-2004. Software/the internet/

While there will definitely be downturns and upswings in the future I doubt we see the kind of tech wasteland that we saw from 2002-2004. Software/the internet/computers are just too involved in today's society and we can't even keep up with the demand right now. The only way I see software engineering (or at least quality SE) not being a scarce resource in the near future is if we dramatically rehaul our education system within the next 10 years, dramatically increase programmer efficiency, and potentially invent an AI to do basic CRUD style work. Even then though, we're going to need legions of programmers to maintain the crap we're building today, and most of that will require highly specialized and rare knowledge (I, for one, can't wait until node.js programmers are the new FORTRAN maintainers). Honestly, in the future the only true full time job might be being a programmer. This is probably not a good thing for people like us, as everyone else will be free to pursue their interests while we still bang our heads at syntax errors.