So, you’ve probably heard about the tech layoffs conducted by Twitter, Meta and recently Amazon.
These events spark media interest and people’s reactions with subsequent theories about how the world is moving on.
Now, I actually think many of them are garbage.
Many of the events we go through are just normal if you consider history and the lifecycles of things. Of course, they’re still unpleasant, but there’s not much we can do about it and if we really have to think about them, then those thoughts are better spent if pointed toward constructive realizations that can help individuals live better lives in the future, and organizations act in a more human, ethical and healthy way (which is historically difficult since there’s the elephant in the room is always revenue).
You may think that the title of this issue, “the death of coding”, is one of those sensationalist theories I was talking about.
And frankly yeah, it is.
But it’s also the starting point of a conversation led by a youtuber (TechLead) I used to follow in the past that went a bit off the rails over time (constantly talking about crypto and other even less sane views).
He’s pretty smart and literate about the tech world though, so I gave this video a watch.
Interestingly enough, that was a good choice: he stated that we’re living in a world where there’s much less need of developing things and platforms. 20, 15, 10 years ago, if you wanted to provide a service, sell a product or talk about something, you had to literally code your own platform, website, app or anything.
Now, developing your own thing requires resources – on every front – strong enough to compete with the most used apps or services out there.
In other words, the tech world is becoming social media.
You might say: “Yeah, so what? Social media has existed for several years now, and despite that new tech has been emerging everyday”.
And yes, that’s true. But like him, I do agree on the fact that it seems more and more difficult to emerge in a scene where social media is becoming more integrated and complete.
I mean, you can sell products, services, subscriptions.. And when that’s not enough, you have thousands of no-code platforms that let you do almost anything (ever heard of Notion and their ultimate goal?)
The point TechLead made was that engineers, simply speaking, are going to be less valuable than the past few years, when they have been treated sort of like superstars.
As an engineer, that’s not the best sentence to agree with, but unfortunately I have to.
It’s not an elitist thing to be able to develop things anymore. And developing things that work (speaking in terms of market) has become more and more difficult.
An interesting example he used was one that compared making a game-app (the purpose of which is not to enhance entertainment and leisure, but to show ads and make money on them) to being a creator that plugs something.
The differences between the two in terms of difficulty is unbelievable. The results? They can easily be the same.
Today, the ones who have an influence on social media, have access to many more things and opportunities compared to the ones who don’t.
An interesting suggestion was to become someone who, to get these perks without being an influencer or creator, curates content of others. Basically a human recommendation system (and these things are one of the pillars of social media).
While I feel that there are still elements that are missing in this train of thought, I am extremely excited to think more about it. Again, I agree with the overall message.
As someone who likes both these worlds, I am already thinking of ways to benefit from both of them, and give my contribution to both worlds while trying to making them better. Because they’re still full of flaws.
I hope this is the start of some good mind trip for you as well.
By the way, this is the link to the video. Enjoy.
P.s.: curating content is exactly what I did here, see?