AbsoluteChicagoDog

When CEOs say if they have to pay taxes they'll just raise prices instead of selling their 5th house people freak out.

When CEOs say they'll just raise prices if their industry is regulated instead of lowering their multi million dollar salaries, people freak out.

But when they say the exact same thing with tariffs, everyone just goes along with it.

Its the same thing. Corporations shouldn't be able to punish people to avoid making slightly less money.

A lot of people will disagree with me on this one. I've been a software engineer for 35 years now. I've worked at everything from tiny companies where I'm the only dev, to startups, to massive corporations with countless employees. And I've never seen anything like what's happening now.

There are four factors:

• H1-Bullshit. Never before have so many H1-B visas been allowed. And the number is only going up. For the uninitiated they're work visas that cap the amount the dev can legally be paid and chain them to their job so they can't quit. They're horribly exploitative and bring down everyone's paycheck.

• The software already built is good enough. Organizations already have either decade+ old software solutions in place or third party vendors that provide those solutions. There will always be bug fixes and maintenance but nobody is building new software from scratch anymore. The stuff that already exists is good enough at what it does that it isn't worth the investment to make something new. That means fewer devs are needed for writing that software.

• Destruction of the public sector. A LOT of unemployed and experienced devs are about to be looking for jobs. If you have less than 10 years of experience be prepared for finding a job to become nearly impossible. Even if the next administration takes a different approach it will take many years to undo just the damage that's already been done.

• AI. I actually don't think AI on it's own will be terribly destructive to the industry. It's a tool that will make devs more efficient and cause a slight drop in openings. But combined with everything else it's just one more factor hurting the industry.

When people ask me how to get into software development I tell them not to bother. I encourage you to consider it as well. The golden age of IT careers is over.

As anyone who remembers the 90s/00s can remember, the internet was supposed to liberate us. Free access to information meant everyone would be educated and informed, and able to freely communicate and organize.

That's not what happened. Corporations turned it into a tool of oppression. Technology has never and will never save us from capitalism on its own. Since the early 1900s we've been capable of providing food, housing, and medical care to everyone but we don't. Technology cannot change that.

Social media is a particularly vile tool. It allows corporations to totally shape the reality of people who use it. To the point where people are so divided it's all but impossible to oppose the government.

Decentralized social media might be better, at least for now. But it's still removing the human element from our lives. Instead of talking to each other we create little echo chambers for ourselves. The Fediverse will not fix that.

The only real solution is to reject social media entirely. Which was happening, but now I fear decentralized social media is pulling people back in.

Most communities have trade unions I could contact if I worked in a trade. But what if I'm an office worker? A chef? An IT person? How do I find a union job?