There was a time when being hired by big tech like Google, Meta or the likes was a big thing.
People would wear the company merchandise and strut around like it was Gucci. It was the status symbol.
Then the pandemic hit.
Then war.
Then inflation.
Everything changed. But the best thing that hit everyone?
Disillusionment.
Layoffs are the new normal
Living with the constant feeling that you’re disposable to the company and that they really don’t care about you is toxic to your health and well-being.
People are not willing to make such a brutal trade anymore. Because now, health is the new trend.
Hustle culture is dying. Healthy living in trending.
Still, some of us have no choice but to keep working in these dog-eats-dog environments that are pitting colleagues against each other for stack ranking.
But even then, no matter how good someone is at these hunger games, it’s ultimately only for survival. Stability from a 9–5 job is a dream now.
How, in your wisest sense, could you buy a house or a new car or even have a baby, knowing that the rug beneath you could be pulled any second?
No new innovation
Even without the layoffs mania, something that was inherently great about the tech industry is no longer present now — - innovation.
Gone are the days when new tech took over everyone like a storm. The era of the internet, from apple’s feathertouch, to tesla’s battery cars, to Zuckerberg’s social media, to crypto — it seems like we’ve seen the peaks of tech innovation. Now all we get to see is tech that makes a lot of hype initially but dies as quickly.
Virtual Reality.
Web3.
NFTs.
And now AI, which is being overhyped way more than it is capable of.
When was the last time you saw a revolutionary product from apple or google?
Nobody cares anymore. Everyone is happy with reels and shorts sucking all their attention.
Content creation is the new innovation.
The infrastructure behind every content creation platform you use now has been done and built by the best engineers during the boom of tech — the time when big tech lived upto their name.
Now, all there’s left to do is maintain these backend platforms. A lot of engineers are left pretending that they’re doing something innovative to prevent getting sacked by their company — like changing the user interface from a vertical list to a horizontal list. Innovation!
The actual creative geniuses who still have innovative ideas lack the support from upper management to ever materialize their ideas. Turns out tech leadership doesnt have money to spend on any new innovation other than AI.
And AI is overrated. Sure it’s good and helpful. But putting all your eggs into the AI bucket is far-fetched and foolish. We’re still years away from it — AI models still have a lot to learn and be trained on.
I’ll believe in the AI revolution when I see Tesla’s robotaxis taking off successfully. Not waymo’s “Self driving” taxis being secretly tele-operated by a remote worker from India and China.
Attention economy
You work your butt off working 9–5. You tolerate the commute when you know damn well that you can do that job at home if it wasn’t for your company’s stupid hybrid work policy. You fake-laugh with your manager cause he has the power to sack you, when in reality you wonder how this dude even got into management.
You do all that, log off, and then open Instagram reels, or Youtube shorts or Tiktok. What do you see?
18 y.os making money by just making content.
Folks doing the 9–5 end up being the consumers of content that these creators make, cause after all that 9–5, they need a dose of doom scrolling to wind down.
You see, we are no longer living in the tech economy like we did 6 years ago. The tech has been built. And now we have the end result of efficient tech backends — content and entertainment at our fingertips with 4k quality and high streaming speed.
We don’t have many kids who come home from school or work to play games like we did in our childhood. We have kids and adults come back and hop on their phone, scroll some reels, or watch some netflix. Gaming is not a lifestyle thing like it used to be, back when we loved playing Miniclip flash games, or Sonic the Hedgehog right after school. Adobe’s Flash is dead. VR is stuck. Gaming is now only left to the elite, loyal gamers.
My advice
I have a masters degree in STEM. I lived and breathed computer science and I worked in big tech in the heart of tech — silicon valley. Then I quit.
Because things are definitely just not the same anymore. The trend has shifted and so has the market.
The demand and supply of talent and skills is off balance, with lots of new grads struggling to find jobs to make ends meet.
I’m not saying 9–5 is dead or you should absolutely deny the opportunity.
What I’m saying is 9–5 is not the same product that was once sold to us by soceity — a product that offered stability, routine, cool things to work on, office parties and whatnot.
Your 9–5 is now just another side hustle — it cannot be relied upon to build the life of your dreams.
To be truly safe and secure in this new age and new times, you need to have either of these —
- Own something (real estate, digital assets, passive income)
- Build something so can you own it (content creation, online courses, small business)
If you’re spending your time doing none of these, then you are just future — poor. Slaving away or cruising away at a corporate company just because you have a nice boss now, a good team and high visibility project that saved you from the layoffs, is not wise. All of that can change in a second. It did for me after 6 years.
So go figure out your passion and build something monetizable out of it — you already have all the tools you need in this tech-saturated era.
Your goal now should be autonomy, not employment.
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