[morpheos137]

Contrary to what most people on this site would say, for many, many years society has overproduced and overcompensated software developers for what they actually do. No other profession, besides maybe Law or Accounting gets higher compensation for making their work less efficient. We have frame works stacked on top of frame works when in many cases we could accomplish the same function, maybe faster 10-20 years ago, with fewer compute resources. As the field matures and becomes more efficient, which is bound to happen some day, I expect relatively static industry standards to overtake the continuous churn of abstractions with dubious value added.

Additionally I would say you can't build an economy on advertising alone. I over the past 20 years too much time and money has been invested in advertising which doesn't really make anything. I suspect many businesses purchasing online advertising are basically getting ripped off. A decade ago when search worked effectively you could find the product or service you wanted with a simple Google search. Now you get served a bunch of semi relevant or irrelevant ads cloaked as search results. So there is a big disruption opportunity for someone who can re-invent search to connect people to what they actually want. I can imagine a search or directory device that connects people and businesses to manufacturers, marketers and service providers...both sides could pay for use directly connecting the revenues of the directory operator to its performance. Even today I know in the manufacturing and engineering space I would rather look at McMaster-Carr or Grainger catalogue than Google Spam or look at the website of a still going business I know from 15-20 years ago that doesn't even show up in search results today.

[techcode]

Sounds like USA centric POV?

It was not until several years ago that software developers in Europe finally reached the mythical 100K per year compensation range, that's been common in USA for more than a decade before that.

And that's in rather expensive Western Europe (e.g. €1500+ per month for one kid/toddler daycare), and not "cheaper" Southern/Eastern Europe.

[shrimp_emoji]

Every POV is USA centric. This is a USA web zone. Nowhere else matters.

[rcbdev]

> Nowhere else matters. Until the California people want to move somewhere liveable with good public transport, low crime, low poverty/homelessness and sensible social safety for their children.

Then - and only then - does Europe miraculously become interesting. Who knew?