Day 3: The changing economy of the Slurp Machine on the roof

rainelemental (46)in #economy • 7 years ago (edited)

Do you remember when in 2000 the Dot Com Bubble exploded? What about the 2008 Real Estate Bubble? I'm not a professional trader neither an economist, but I'm a software engineer, so let me share my point as an insider of the tech industry.

Company Are People

Companies are made of people, with all social and psychological factors. Look at companies like people and you'll understand companies much better.

People have feelings

These last 2 years, going to conference and meetups, I spoke to many people from different tech startups. I noticed in many of them a common feeling of uncertainty, frustration, and unsatisfaction. Well, while I expect that from people who work in small to mid startup that received millions in funding for a questionable product, I got that same feeling from people working at public traded startups.

Tech is downsizing

In this last 2 years, many of those companies, downsized their team, laying off several of my friends. The feeling is that the dream of the slurp machine on the roof have been fading away. To get a sense of the size of the layoff check this list:
https://techcrunch.com/tag/layoffs/

My point of view

Based on my experience and feeling, tech is near a big correction. I believe that small tech startups are running out of fuel since investments are getting tighter, shareholders and investors are now looking for revenue. Many of those mid-small startups will fold, a few lucky one will go through hire-acquisition other will be sold penny by the dollar. What this means for a global economy, I honestly don't know and I'd like to hear your opinion.

What's next?

I expect in the next 5 to 10 years, to see lot of small startups growing from zero to Snapchat in just 2 years, and that's because new technology, such as Kubernates and Google Cloud, enable small teams to quickly build highly scalable products, also thanks to crowdfunding like ICO, valid company can raise money lot faster.

I think all current tech company will either be replaced by their AI version or they will implement AI. Blockchain and IoT will also play an interesting role.

Think this, the iPhone didn't exist just 10 years ago.