After the dot.com, there was the O-pocalypse that terrified me as a recent grad.

- Open source - Outsourcing - Offshoring

It was driving the labour cost of an engineer to zero I felt as a young man.

Then time passed, and I learnt that engineers aren't paid to code. Engineers are paid to solve problems for a business.

If you recall, the dot.com bust and 9/11 crashed finances for a few years. When the money printing gun went whir because "Deficits don't matter" Washington, then engineers were in demand again.

Right now we are in a weird situation where money is being printed and it is also tight. Most of it is going to the hardware and infrastructure layer, like the fiber optic bubble in the dot.com. Software will have its time in the sun again.