Because work from home has been normalized and it takes much more inertia to get people out of their homes to drive or take public transit to a work event than

Because work from home has been normalized and it takes much more inertia to get people out of their homes to drive or take public transit to a work event than it did when they were held at some office nearby. Because companies used to host event spaces for Meetups, and between them scaling this back (my opinion) and event space being expensive, it's harder for work-related Meetups to meet. (Non-work-related Meetups seem to be doing okay though!) Because companies are also getting stingier about flying rank-and-file engineers out to events, even if it's part of their training budget. Because --- and this might be a stretch --- free food and drinks was a major draw for these events, and people (especially the youngs) are drinking less. Saying that COVID was simply "a factor" in causing this is a dramatic undersell. COVID was THE factor. It opened peoples' eyes to work from home. That changed literally everything. As for me: these events were all about the drinks and late nights _after_ (and sometimes during) the event. I don't enjoy drinking late at night, I'm usually on a meal plan and prefer to stick to it, and I generally go to sleep earlier these days. All of these things have made tech events harder to enjoy. Also, everything's about AI now, which couldn't be more depressing IMO.