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The good times in tech are over

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  • For most of the last decade, being a software engineer has been a lot of fun. Every company offered lots of perks, layoffs and firings were almost unheard of, and in general we were treated as special little geniuses who needed to be pampered so we could work our magic. That’s changed in the last two years.
  • In the 2010s, interest rates were zero or close to zero2. Investors could thus borrow a lot of money. Much of that money was spent on tech companies in the hope of outsized returns. Tech companies were thus incentivized to (a) hire like crazy, and (b) do a lot of low-risk high-reward things, even if that ends up wasting money. Tech companies definitely did not have to be profitable. In fact, they didn’t even need to make money — they just had to acquire users, or at least hype, to drive up the valuation of the company itself. In that environment, throwing money at their software engineers (in the form of paid trips, in-house chefs, and huge comp packages) was a sensible business decision.
  • I do believe in the power of AI, and I wouldn’t be surprised if it takes software jobs at some point in the future, but it’s certainly not behind the vibe shift in software engineering right now.
  • companies now are actually trying to focus. In 2015, there was a lot of appetite to do everything at the same time
  • In 2025, most of these initiatives have been abruptly defunded in order to put more resources into a handful of bets that the company executives actually care about.
  • During the 2010s, it was as if companies were their software engineers, and were interested in the same things as their engineers were. A lot of engineers were fooled by this into identifying strongly with their employer.
  • Now the mirage has vanished. Companies are their executive leadership, and their executive leadership are interested in a much smaller set of things.
  • If you were an engineer who loved working on your company’s open-source libraries, it’s probably sensible to confront the fact that the company never really cared about it that much. When interest rates were zero, it was worth doing because most things were worth doing. At 5% interest rates, most open-source work doesn’t meet that bar. In other words, your interests now conflict with your company’s interests.
  • It’s okay for your interests to conflict with your company’s. You get to decide what you care about, and what you’re willing to fight for. But when you act in ways that don’t further your company’s interests, you risk being seen as ineffective or unreliable. In 2025, that makes you vulnerable to being laid off.
    • Providing value to the company gets you rewarded
    • Not providing value to the company gets you punished
    • “Value to the company” means furthering the explicit plans of your company’s executives

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In summary, the dramatic shift in tech culture stems not from AI or COVID, but from rising interest rates forcing companies to prioritize profitability and executive goals over engineer-centric perks, making it essential for developers to align their work with tangible business value to survive.

  • Rising interest rates shifted corporate priorities: The move from near-zero to ~5% rates ended the era of unlimited growth-at-all-costs, forcing tech companies to focus on profitability and strategic bets over engineer perks.
  • The cultural pivot is economic, not technological: Layoffs and reduced job security are driven by macroeconomic fundamentals rather than AI automation or post-pandemic adjustments alone.
  • Engineer interests now conflict with corporate goals: Companies no longer cater to broad open-source initiatives or experimental projects; they fund only what directly serves executive plans.
  • Align with business value to ensure job security: Engineers must accept that personal projects and past privileges are secondary to delivering direct, measurable value to the company's bottom line.

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