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Layoffs and offshoring. of course I have a personal stake in this :)

I'm not saying that there's no talent overseas, precisely the opposite. Offshoring has been tried since the 90s and it works to some extent. I expect (hope) things to rebalance once cheaper money becomes available again. Things will probably won't be the same as before, but it'll probably be a net benefit with the wealth being spread around the world.

It's funny, as an American in this economy, I was only able to find work by applying abroad, and eventually ended up working for a European company.

They pay less than the American ones did, but my god, it's so much nicer to work with them... small team, no bullshit meetings or stupid rituals, just a bunch of friendly, highly competent people. Makes me really want to move to Europe.

I wish we didn't have the borders we did, and people could just live anywhere without visas and such...

> I wish we didn't have the borders we did, and people could just live anywhere without visas and such...

I feel much the same way as you. However, you may not realise that some countries in Europe have very reasonable immigration requirements. Citizens of the USA, for instance, are one group that Germany allows to immigrate without a visa in order to look for work. To actually start a job in an EU country, you are probably eligible for a work visa already. For bachelors degree holders, the EU Blue Card is the most powerful work permit and gives you the right to work in any EU country.

I didn't know that! Thank you for the info. It's something I've been talking to my SO about... she's more tied to the US than I am, but someday I'd love to get us both elsewhere.
Enjoy it while it lasts because the more that do this, the faster this will lead to similar crunch the US is experiencing (workers having to justify their existence to the owners of an ever more efficient economy). Our trade is in accelerating business after all..
I don't know, a part of me hopes that my profession becomes just another boring line of work. I started doing this in the 90s when web dev was as unglamorous as any other line-of-business programming work, not much different than being a DB admin. Then over time it grew into a bubble (and then another) and then COVID hit and it all exploded... but that was never gonna be sustainable.

I would rather it be a mundane industry again without hypergrowth, attracting only the people who are really interested in it, rather than the folks who're in it for the money and who try to speculate on and grow every business and team into inevitable enshittification.

In my mind it's really just another trade skill, not entirely different from carpentry or plumbing, and should be treated as such and just casually exist in every neighborhood, mostly invisible, not be the end-all-be-all of the entire economy. Then people like us just live and work and immigrate like any other humble skilled craftsperson, not some hoity-toity digital capitalist. I hate the glamor and glitz and competitiveness -- and dark patterns and shitty management and MBA thinking -- that excess wealth brought to this industry.

shrug Maybe the AI boom will draw away all the capitalist speculators and web dev becomes just another unsexy mundane job again.

Offshoring will go quite similar to how work from home did. In fact, remote work is a prerequisite. It'll cycle for the same reasons. Same goes for outsourcing things to AI, even when the AI can do the work 50% better than a human.
VR for the masses. I'm sure it will progressively find more niches as the hardware and use cases mature. But as a mass computing medium ? and with a headset ? Nope (Sorry Apple)

I believe we will have to wait for the intersection of Holography [1] and Generative video AI [2] to mature (15-30 years ?)

[1] https://blog.google/technology/research/project-starline/ [2] https://tech.facebook.com/reality-labs/2019/3/codec-avatars-...

LLMs
inb4 LLMs

In all seriousness I think the recent advancements are groundbreaking but will plateau soon

AI