Allegedly more people are coding than ever, with thanks to kids having coding on the curriculum. The problem with all engineering is that stuff gets built, and

Allegedly more people are coding than ever, with thanks to kids having coding on the curriculum. The problem with all engineering is that stuff gets built, and, once it is built, you don't need all the engineers that built it anymore. Things then get into the 'cottage industry phase'. Ecommerce is fascinating in this regard. Being able to sell stuff online was a goldmine at the start, with every business needing to get online to sell their products and services. However, platforms such as Shopify, Etsy and Amazon came along and companies ditched their expensive programmers to use the new SaaS platforms for ecommerce. Video games and anything 3D entered the 'cottage industry phase' a long time ago and the same with social media things, the infrastructure is built and those in the game just play musical chairs going from one gig to another, with relatively few openings for new people. Outsourcing due to globalisation comes into it, why pay for programmers in a Western city when you can move the operation to Eastern Europe or India? Undoubtedly this is a factor, however, there comes a time when everything is consolidated and just built. Compare with the build out of networks in the Nortel days. If you knew how to do things with fibre optic splitters and big boxes with lots of lights on them then everything was golden, whilst the boom lasted. But then everything was built and it entered 'cottage industry phase'.