What You Should Know about the Changing Tech Industry — Careers Done Write

In the post-war period, manufacturing jobs were highly sought. At the time, such jobs provided good wages, guaranteed employment, and often the protection of a union. Manufacturing jobs led to the economic boom and the emergence of a strong middle class during the mid-20th century. The oil crisis of the 1970s was the precipitating event that incited the decline of American manufacturing. By 1980, the manufacturing sector had shed 34% of all jobs. What was once a guaranteed ticket to the middle class was now a dead end. 

In 1982, a landmark court decision broke up the monopoly of the Bell telephone system. Bell Operating Companies, known colloquially as Ma Bell, was a monopoly, to be sure, but considered itself a natural monopoly—the provider of a service for which the operating costs were so high that only a single company could do it efficiently. United States vs. AT&T brought more competition in the long-distance telecommunications market, with companies like Sprint and MCI entering the market. From 1982 through the early 2000s, telecom was a hot industry that attracted top talent. However, greed, optimism, and excessive investment led the telecom bubble to burst in 2001. 

The late 1990s ushered in the dot com bubble. It seemed that every day, there was a new dot com startup that was well funded, regardless of the viability of its products and services. People jumped ship from larger, more established companies and went to work for future industry leaders like numbertwopencils.com, your online source for graphite writing implements. Overvaluation, lack of due diligence, media frenzy, and an abundance of venture capital colluded to form a perfect financial storm that came to a head in March of 2000, resulting in the dot com crash. 

From the 2000s up until the COVID-19 pandemic, the tech industry experienced an unprecedented boom driven by years of historically low interest rates, innovation, and a strong overall economy. Many tech companies became household names. Countless riches were made by founding, working, and investing in tech. Again, venture capital money flowed freely, and Silicon Valley founders were held up as the new Masters of the Universe. 

In the Information Age, technology is infused into everything we do. For many people, the specter of working in tech carries with it a certain cachet and a perception of glamor and cutting-edge thinking. Without a doubt, many career changers with whom I’ve worked over the last decade have aspirations of breaking into tech. However, by 2022, the tech industry was doing mass layoffs of talent all across their organizations. It wasn’t just folks in marketing and HR who were being let go; developers, coders, and product managers were also shed as tech companies figuratively tightened their belts. 

History tends to repeat itself, and Google is the AT&T/Ma Bell of today. The company is presently being sued by the Department of Justice for violating the Sherman Antitrust Act, the same law that forced the break up of AT&T in the 80s. FAANG companies such as Google have typically offered a multitude of employee perks, such as laundry services, free lunch, and on-site game rooms. These perks were not offered to employees out of altruism; instead, they were used to attract in-demand talent and to keep people at the office for long hours. But now, driven by mass layoffs and a pivot to AI, the tech industry is chipping away at the quirky perks that were once common in the industry. 

Once the unstoppable engine of modern innovation, the tech industry has fallen from this lofty position. The emergence of AI will fundamentally upend the industry. AI is going to be leveraged to increase productivity in tech workers. Meta and Google are already building internal AI tools for coding and other functions.