[applfanboysbgon]

I think we're in partial agreement on some things. I agree that the software field overhired and overpaid people who should never have had jobs in software in the first place, and that a correction is/was overdue. I also generally agree that small companies cannot afford to produce garbage software, and if they make poor decisions about hiring or AI usage, they will die in the womb. But startups failing is not really what I think of when somebody says "companies will be replaced" or "your job security is contigent on what management thinks of AI capabilities". Those sentences both convoke images of already-successful enterprise companies, and already-successful enterprise companies are the ones that are most resistant to market forces. Indeed, we already see this in the real world, because most enterprise companies produce truly horrifyingly bad software, even before AI. The secret is that you need to produce good software to become successful, and then once successful, network effects take over and your company can become unbelievably inefficient and have little to no fear of being replaced. Tech is a ridiculously winner-take-all field, and it's very common for a single company to capture over 50% of their market, after which point they are effectively irreplaceable no matter how many bad decisions they make, at least for many years if not decades.