Big Tech Killed the Golden Age of Programming

This is a really terrible article. I suspect the HN comment section will be good, but TFA is not worth reading IMHO (though it is quite short so can be read in a minute or two).

> For years, companies like Google, Facebook/Meta, and Amazon hired too many developers. They knew they were hiring too many developers, but they did it anyway because of corporate greed. They wanted to control the talent pool.

Aside from all the claims with no sources/references whatsoever (claims which are not at all self-evident), blaming "corporate greed" for hiring employees? Isn't it also "corporate greed" to lay people off? Blaming corporate greed for causing high salaries? Let me guess, if they started cutting salaries, that is also corporate greed?

It's not possible to "control the talent pool" when there are so many companies in competition. Yes, they want to hire the best engineers they can find and they will pay handsomely for it. Every company (even our small non-profit) wants to hire the best engineers we can find. It's not "corporate greed" or us wanting to control the talent pool.

The hyperbole and cliche (corporate greed) makes this trashy, but let me fix it...

Big Tech firms with blockbuster products like adwords, aws, iPhone and whatnot... they are extremely profitable. So profitable that the basic business logic of "invest more in the money-maker" reaches reductio ad absurdum.

So yeah. A lot of talent is locked up where the salaries are highest. These have so much resources and talent thrown at them that it can start to get wonky.

If you are actually hiring up to the point where the marginal 300k engineer causes a net loss of output (not just profit)... you are well into territory that just sucks.

That kind of thing happens... and thats also where some of the highest salaries and best talent is.

That said... I think AI projects have been a steam valve. This was worse 5 years ago.

Big Tech drove us towards techno-feudalism. It's a wider social phenomenon and their hiring patterns for programmers are only one aspect of the problem. Small businesses are forced to do business on their platforms according to their rules, or else they go bust. Programmers are forced to learn their APIs, so that their "app" can live in their walled gardens. They soaked a huge amount of talent to optimise their ad and recommendation engines. This is a huge opportunity cost to society - that talent could be doing great creative stuff for small and medium-sized businesses instead.