But when you can get 5% returns just by sticking your money in the bank, why would you bother investing in software, where 99¢ is considered an exorbitant cost by its customers? That is no doubt why all of these creative industries are on the decline. There is, generally speaking, no money to be made.
Better tools like Copilot and ChatGPT reduce the amount of time it takes to deliver a feature, reducing the need to horizontally scale developers.
Why hire 10 when 3 could do the same work with AI tooling?
I think while tech is obviously contracting post-COVID from overhiring, it's also true that you just don't need as many people anymore.
Also, not to move the goal posts, but there has been a large economic shift since Q3 2022 with tech & finance belt tightening, inflation normalizing and generally slowing. So these things don't happen in a vacuum (which makes them hard to measure!).
For example my previous & current employer have done their first layoffs since pre-pandemic, and neither has anything to do with AI. They just overexpanded and need to shrink.
