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I have this impression as well. AI, interest rates are secondary. Tech industry has just run out of ideas that would promise profits - and that didn't start in

by oytis 1y ago

I have this impression as well. AI, interest rates are secondary. Tech industry has just run out of ideas that would promise profits - and that didn't start in 2023. Same story as with "overhiring". If you have a bigger crew, you just go plunder bigger ships - except if the ships are just not there or you have no idea how to find them.

MichaelZuo 1y ago
How do you know this? From what I’ve heard cream of the crop grads in hot fields are still getting huge offers and getting snapped up by the big names as well as smaller firms. Some of those must be real positions doing promising work.
- oblio 1y ago
  > From what I’ve heard cream of the crop grads in hot fields are still getting huge offers and getting snapped up by the big names as well as smaller firms. Yeah, but that's making the distribution something like 1-5% vs 95-95% versus maybe 30-40% - 60-70% 5-10 years ago. The shift is significant. > Some of those must be real positions doing promising work. Of course, there are always ad optimizations and engagement optimizations to be made :-p
  - MichaelZuo 1y ago
    Were 60th or 70th percentile grads getting huge offers 5-10 years ago? In which fields?
    - oblio 1y ago
      I was talking about IT and the percentages were the other way around.
throwaway48476 1y ago
It's not that there are no ideas just no one willing to invest in anything that takes longer than 1 year or involves hardware. Most all new unicorn businesses are just rent seeking platforms. There's absolutely zero interest in creating value, only capturing it from someone else.
candiddevmike 1y ago
There's tons of ideas, but there's also too many good enough bad ideas with inertia/$$$ that don't want competition.
nixpulvis 1y ago
It's not just that, but it's also that more and more people are getting into the industry for its promise of high paying relatively cushy jobs. Just look at university CS major enrollments. Not to mention bootcamps and accelerated programs. I've been feeling like this has been coming long before AI doomsayers were a thing. The problem is that it's surprisingly difficult to judge candidates from the interview process, so the expectation value of a new hire has a lot of uncertainty. And while degrees from good schools are a good indicator, tech jobs perhaps unlike medical or legal fields, for example, are not the end all be all for success. It's entirely possible to be smart and self motivated and taught.
klabb3 1y ago
Interest rates matter, and having a global reserve currency helps capital markets that fund these things. I would suggest 3 other forces: - saturation: we don’t have any legacy fields left that aren’t yet digitized. If you I go from encyclopedia -> search engine or taxi -> uber you have a first mover green field market - dominance games: VCs want scale, and scale is difficult with niche markets. Yet there are innovations there, but who cares? A new shitcoin has the potential to scale quickly, whereas startups in even energy seems to be a downer for them - no manufacturing: long iteration cycles on anything that needs hardware. Plus, lower margins, and the Chinese will sell cheap knockoffs anyway if you’re successful, so bigger risk. Thus, more shitcoin and AI wrappers.
stego-tech 1y ago
> Tech industry has just run out of ideas that would promise profits - and that didn't start in 2023. This, and it’s not getting enough attention. Big Tech hasn’t had ideas other than acquisitions for decades. Startups aren’t inventing new things, just honing existing tech into an acquirable moat. Their big moonshots have failed one by one, with their two remaining ones - AI (current) and Quantum (next) - on their last legs of patience with shareholders. NFTs, Crypto, the “Metaverse”, Big Data, the Cloud, all of these have had varying degrees of initial success but now see scrutiny in the face of dwindling funds and rising costs, which is forcing Big Tech to try and adapt to being mature entities rather than startups. It extends from B2B into the B2C realm as well. Yearly refreshes are increasingly underwhelming as components stop scaling like they did in the past, bumping up against physical limitations of materials that can’t be overcome without substantial R&D. R&D that they don’t want to pay for, because it’s high risk and high reward (a scenario tech isn’t really used to anymore). Nobody’s swinging for the fences, just incrementing very slowly over time until someone else does the heavy lifting who they can poach in an acquisition. It’s bad, ya’ll.

by oytis 1y ago

MichaelZuo 1y ago

How do you know this? From what I’ve heard cream of the crop grads in hot fields are still getting huge offers and getting snapped up by the big names as well as smaller firms. Some of those must be real positions doing promising work.

oblio 1y ago
> From what I’ve heard cream of the crop grads in hot fields are still getting huge offers and getting snapped up by the big names as well as smaller firms. Yeah, but that's making the distribution something like 1-5% vs 95-95% versus maybe 30-40% - 60-70% 5-10 years ago. The shift is significant. > Some of those must be real positions doing promising work. Of course, there are always ad optimizations and engagement optimizations to be made :-p
- MichaelZuo 1y ago
  Were 60th or 70th percentile grads getting huge offers 5-10 years ago? In which fields?
  - oblio 1y ago
    I was talking about IT and the percentages were the other way around.

throwaway48476 1y ago

It's not that there are no ideas just no one willing to invest in anything that takes longer than 1 year or involves hardware. Most all new unicorn businesses are just rent seeking platforms. There's absolutely zero interest in creating value, only capturing it from someone else.

candiddevmike 1y ago

There's tons of ideas, but there's also too many good enough bad ideas with inertia/$$$ that don't want competition.

nixpulvis 1y ago

It's not just that, but it's also that more and more people are getting into the industry for its promise of high paying relatively cushy jobs. Just look at university CS major enrollments. Not to mention bootcamps and accelerated programs. I've been feeling like this has been coming long before AI doomsayers were a thing. The problem is that it's surprisingly difficult to judge candidates from the interview process, so the expectation value of a new hire has a lot of uncertainty. And while degrees from good schools are a good indicator, tech jobs perhaps unlike medical or legal fields, for example, are not the end all be all for success. It's entirely possible to be smart and self motivated and taught.

klabb3 1y ago

Interest rates matter, and having a global reserve currency helps capital markets that fund these things. I would suggest 3 other forces: - saturation: we don’t have any legacy fields left that aren’t yet digitized. If you I go from encyclopedia -> search engine or taxi -> uber you have a first mover green field market - dominance games: VCs want scale, and scale is difficult with niche markets. Yet there are innovations there, but who cares? A new shitcoin has the potential to scale quickly, whereas startups in even energy seems to be a downer for them - no manufacturing: long iteration cycles on anything that needs hardware. Plus, lower margins, and the Chinese will sell cheap knockoffs anyway if you’re successful, so bigger risk. Thus, more shitcoin and AI wrappers.

stego-tech 1y ago

> Tech industry has just run out of ideas that would promise profits - and that didn't start in 2023. This, and it’s not getting enough attention. Big Tech hasn’t had ideas other than acquisitions for decades. Startups aren’t inventing new things, just honing existing tech into an acquirable moat. Their big moonshots have failed one by one, with their two remaining ones - AI (current) and Quantum (next) - on their last legs of patience with shareholders. NFTs, Crypto, the “Metaverse”, Big Data, the Cloud, all of these have had varying degrees of initial success but now see scrutiny in the face of dwindling funds and rising costs, which is forcing Big Tech to try and adapt to being mature entities rather than startups. It extends from B2B into the B2C realm as well. Yearly refreshes are increasingly underwhelming as components stop scaling like they did in the past, bumping up against physical limitations of materials that can’t be overcome without substantial R&D. R&D that they don’t want to pay for, because it’s high risk and high reward (a scenario tech isn’t really used to anymore). Nobody’s swinging for the fences, just incrementing very slowly over time until someone else does the heavy lifting who they can poach in an acquisition. It’s bad, ya’ll.