Dear lord. Okay I will respond to your own words. > It's not interest rates or AI. We agree on the AI part. But high interest rates are definitely chilling bu

Dear lord. Okay I will respond to your own words. > It's not interest rates or AI. We agree on the AI part. But high interest rates are definitely chilling business' ability to fund development, make payroll, all the things I talked about. > It's companies trying to suppress and ultimately lower wages paid to software engineers. If a business is doing this, it's because their engineers are overpaid relative to the value they generate. The business can react by raising prices (which get passed onto the consumer and, if enough businesses do this, comes back around as additional pressure to increase wages) or they can make workforce cuts that are either not replaced or are replaced with less expensive labor. So, I would say you are technically accurate here. But, by offering none of the "why" that I do, you leave the reader with the assumption that your "why" is that the business is motivated by the cuts themselves, because evil or something. Which of course is ridiculous. > Unless workers quit companies that are doing multiple rounds of layoffs and working people to death, it's not going to get any better. Yes, power to the people. I'll quit unless you pay me more money that you don't have, right before you were going to lay me off anyway. And I won't be able to collect unemployment as a result. Sounds like a plan.