This could describe today, with crypto (tech still looking for solutions to problems that aren't scams), AI (great potential but mostly in a gimmick phase right now), and VCs coming from a decade of record-low rates causing extreme valuations across the board ($5M seed rounds, etc).
If you exclude Big Tech (which also took a beating but is managing), the smaller tech scene is ripe for a disruption of a very uncomfortable kind.
I’m pretty happy for all those sectors to tank, they don’t produce value that people would pay for, while we struggle finding competent people for product startups generating 500k per employee.
Do the hard tasks and I pay you exactly this amount. People are, really, so lazy. Yes there is some jQuery in the app, well it’s not the bane of the world, and yes we gotta interact with customers, horror, well deal with it and I pay you exactly the revenue it generates.
But of course everyone wants to have K8s and microservices on their resume, rather than building something people want.
I’ve said almost that to my senior, but he keeps hating the jQuery app. It’s fine with me, but don’t complain.
At the same time, the web had only proven that regular people were willing to try it, but there was no meaningful consumer or advertiser money flowing through it for another ten years. So basically you had a perfect storm of a bunch of people trying to figure out something from scratch and massive over investment from VCs. When the music stopped it was a bloodbath because there was so little actual revenue.
I don't see the same thing happening now because the web is firmly embedded in our lives and someone needs to maintain all this code. I'm honestly more worried about environmental threats and the sustainability of our way of life than the economy per se.