Mostly agree with the timeline.

I would say that advertising took over the consumer web ushering in censorship and extreme word policing to satisfy family (ad) friendly content - starting in 2010ish with influencer marketing.

(Anyone remember Klout?)

By 2016, with Trump and DEI and everything else (ZIRP), Old Money took over the industry side - hiring, equity, liquidity.

At some point tech jobs became all white collar. All “IC” (then coined) were being funneled into generalist full stack engineer increasing the fungibility of labor to a point you even could do leveling and layoffs.

I digress, we as technologists and creatives need to be constantly making new ways, new things, and staying ahead, so we can always have the golden years because we’re always operating at the cutting edge.

Like it or not, we are currently in a time with AI that many will look back on fondly.

Someday someone will write “the AI I grew up with doesn’t exist” and it really won’t, once everyone else really gets their hands on it, it pervades industry, and becomes curricularized into whatever the markets want.