No worries, all good! It's difficult to convey emotions and tone online.

> it was a fellow older fellow

~11 years professional experience only - still got plenty to learn, but unfortunately seen enough shit to be cynical. Started out starry-eyed in the middle of the ZIRP era ~2015 and made some salary off it but no exit money, though something felt off and I never understood the over-engineering at the time.

Then as I gained experience, switched to consulting to boost my earnings and looking back at it my (admittedly very jaded) opinion is that a lot of that "engineering" was performative bullshit enabled by cheap money, which continues to be the case in some verticals (blockchain; now AI).

Senior engineers of the time would've likely known it was bullshit and were just happy to play with new tech while subsidized by VCs, but unfortunately this "quiet part" was never said out loud to those who started their careers during this period and for whom their only experience of technology was through this distorted lens of cheap money and no financial/business pressures.

The result is a lot of very senior people tech-wise but with little exposure to the business side of their craft, who the readjustment hit like a brick wall. The fact my statement about maintaining a (well-built) product requiring much less manpower than building it is apparently controversial suggests many people have yet to experience this brick wall.

But for those who looked into the financials, the selling out and subsequent layoffs should've come at no surprise - it was never sustainable to keep paying those tech salaries perpetually. The same thing happened to blockchain/web3/crypto, and the same will eventually happen to AI.

There is still and will always be money to be made in technology, but it will be made by applying technology to business problems and approaching every problem as "how much money does this make/save and how big of a cut I can negotiate". Permanent employment is just letting someone else do said negotiation on your behalf in exchange for a promise of stability - well, turns out when the times are tough they don't have to keep that promise: plan accordingly.

(btw, this ZIRP-era distortion was not limited to technical roles - there were plenty of "startup founders" and executive roles too who got there because of the cheap money rather than earning said position through demonstrated skill - unsurprisingly, a lot of those people have since quietly transitioned back to the rank & file once the money fueling their little startup escapade ran out)