Just sharing a few thoughts (rant) on what I feel being a part of the industry.
Specially since recession talks are in the air, over the last few days, I have been thinking about the software industry and the kind of things we all end up building (including me). What if all of it went away? Would someone even care.
I think most of the software / computing tools we need are available today (in excess and cheap) and the services we need can be fulfilled by a few large companies (Google, Microsoft, Apple). The rest of us are building bloatware that the world probably does not need. (I am excluding platforms - talking about the pure “software” industry here).
All the fancy new things ™ in the past decade - NoSQL, Microservices, NoCode are all essentially solving one problem while creating several new ones. Most B2B SAAS apps are sold on the backs of large sales teams that end up selling to large companies who basically take decisions based on social norms rather than technical merits.
I think we should really pause and think if we are really adding any value as companies / engineers / creators here. There is huge amounts of investment that is flowing into software that won’t make a difference if stopped existing, or won’t be sold unless sales people kept selling, or investors stopped pumping millions in them.
If all the VC investment in the software world stopped, it won’t make much difference to the real world - that’s why I think we are living inside a massive Ponzi scheme.
Comments welcome!