> I think you'll have a lot more independent software devs. I think that's good, corporations were surprisingly bad at developing software.
Will you, though? I mean, working on software for a living means having someone paying you to do something. If a corporation with an established business and reliable revenue can't justify paying you for your work, who do you expect to come in and cover your rent?
I don't know if you've worked for an "established" corporation developing software before but most of what they pay you for is dealing with internal (arguably mostly social) stuff. Some minority is actual useful software development work.
> (...) but most of what they pay you for is dealing with internal (arguably mostly social) stuff.
Not really. They pay you to deliver something, but you also need to coordinate and interact with people. That involves coordinating and syncing.
There is absolutely no position or role whatsoever, either in a big corporation or small freelancer gig, that you do not need to coordinate and interact with people.
Pray tell, how do you expect to be paid while neither delivering results nor coordinating with anyone else?
That's what I'm thinking, while corporate lays off people, these people groups up, offer human services, instead of corporate AI bull, corporate dies off, and we are back to software actually being people things again.
Cheap-as-chips AI from gigantic data-centres is certain to go away, one way or another. Either the companies succeed in their game plan, and start to raise prices once they've established a set of dependent customers, or else they all go bust and the data-centres stand idle whilst the industry puzzles over a business model that works.
Of course the technology will remain. You'll still be able to run models locally (but they won't be as good). And eventually someone will work out how to make the data-centres turn a profit (but that won't be cheap for users).
Or maybe the local models will get good enough, and the data-centres will turn out to be a gigantic white elephant.
I was not clear, apologies, I meant to say, I feel the corporate control over things should go away.
AI is definitely not going away. But I feel it could be like how it was in 90s, when people can get their hands on a computer and do amazing things. Yes, I know corporate existed then, but I think it was not this direct, and sinister as it is now.
Many of the corporates that are trying to getting rid of employees in favor of AI, So they might lose a huge ground to someone who keeps the old school way going while leveraging AI in a more practical way, and general people will soon realize it's not what they're being fed, and revert, but it's not that easy for the big ones to rollback.
Which might end the corporate control over many of the things.
This is what I meant, but I am sleepy and tired, failed to articulate properly, hopefully the gist of it was clear.
If you assume that AI will further enshittify the corporate software program writ large, it’s no easy to see how this is analogous to the dot com boom where new good ideas get sidelined and easy ones get mainlined, and the outsiders ultimately storm the castle and win. Granted, I don’t really think that is the case, but it’s a possibility
that's the problem. market is already oversaturdated. just check HN posts about App Store crisis we have now
gatekeeping on distribution is unbelievable. getting something to financially work requires marketing and "white passs from gatekeepers" expenditures which eat away any margins you may have
if you get laid off by big tech (no matter years of experience) chances are you are going to be doing Doordash and living in a tent
> gatekeeping on distribution is unbelievable. getting something to financially work requires marketing and "white passs from gatekeepers" expenditures which eat away any margins you may have
That is one way of putting it.
Another way to put it is that app stores are so saturated with N versions of the same God damned app doing exactly the same God damned thing that even when they start to charge a gatekeeping fee you still get marker saturation.
