Tech Sector Layoffs: Should Developers Worry?

00:00:00: - Hi Manuel. First episode of our new podcast.

00:00:03: - Hi Max. Yeah.

00:00:03: We thought we start this quickly,

00:00:06: and easily with the obvious question.

00:00:08: It's the beginning of the new year.

00:00:10: How was your start into 2024?

00:00:13: - Smooth start, and nothing special.

00:00:16: I celebrated New Year's Eve with a couple friends.

00:00:19: - You were there. - Indeed. Indeed. Yeah.

00:00:21: But not too long.

00:00:22: - Yeah, not too long,

00:00:23: because I- - Old man. We're getting old.

00:00:25: - Yeah. But other than that,

00:00:27: back to work, back in, on recording videos,

00:00:31: and this new podcast.

00:00:33: - And that's actually an important

00:00:34: new aspect of our work.

00:00:36: We decided to start a podcast in 2024.

00:00:38: - Yes. - And I think we start

00:00:41: directly with the topic that's

00:00:43: basically all around the tech industry in 2023,

00:00:47: and also '24 already. - Yeah.

00:00:50: - The state of the tech industry, employment,

00:00:54: people getting fired, et cetera.

00:00:56: - Yeah. - Maybe

00:00:57: you wanna have a take on that.

00:00:59: - The new year seems to start

00:01:01: as the old year ended, you could say, right?

00:01:03: I mean, we had some massive layoffs again

00:01:06: by Spotify in December.

00:01:09: Great timing. - Yeah, perfect. Perfect.

00:01:12: - Shortly before Christmas. - Yeah.

00:01:14: - And now in the new year,

00:01:16: we're just a couple of days into the new year,

00:01:18: and we got already some layoffs.

00:01:21: We have them here, like Duolingo, Twitch, Amazon,

00:01:26: all with their audible audiobook business.

00:01:31: Layoffs by Google. - Yeah.

00:01:33: - Who laid off significant parts

00:01:34: of their voice assistant division as it seems.

00:01:40: So again, starting with some massive layoffs here.

00:01:43: - Indeed. - And we'll also

00:01:45: share this source with you

00:01:47: so you can check this on your own.

00:01:48: And that's actually also

00:01:50: how we wanna dive into this podcast now,

00:01:52: because we wanna have a quick analysis,

00:01:54: at least our points of view,

00:01:56: about the situation as it's now,

00:01:58: but also how we came into the situation.

00:02:01: And also, little hint ahead, as Max said,

00:02:04: layoffs are happening,

00:02:07: but we'll of course focus onto the tech industry,

00:02:09: but we'll think about the details.

00:02:11: So who are these people that lose their jobs, actually?

00:02:13: - Yeah. And what does it mean for,

00:02:16: for us developers, right? - Yeah. Yeah.

00:02:17: - Because obviously our audience,

00:02:19: you and ourselves included, we are developers.

00:02:23: We are working in that area. - Yeah.

00:02:24: - And the obvious question of course kind of is,

00:02:28: will this continue this year?

00:02:30: And also, of course, what does this mean for developers?

00:02:34: Also of course, if we consider that we have

00:02:36: this whole AI topic. - Yeah.

00:02:38: - Are these layoffs happening because of AI?

00:02:41: If they aren't, will we see more layoffs due to AI?

00:02:44: So lots of interesting questions around those layoffs.

00:02:48: But we'll have a look at the extraordinary growth

00:02:52: that we saw actually with the beginning,

00:02:54: or at the beginning of the pandemic.

00:02:56: So let's say 2020. - Yeah.

00:02:58: - 2020, end of 2020 and 2021 especially.

00:03:01: - Yeah. - Those were basically the,

00:03:03: the days where the whole market went crazy you could say.

00:03:06: - Yeah, absolutely.

00:03:08: People got hired, and hired and hired.

00:03:11: The online business in general grew extremely.

00:03:14: - Yeah. - Huge spike.

00:03:15: - Yeah. This was true by the way, also for,

00:03:18: for I guess for YouTube, for Twitch,

00:03:20: for online courses, you must say.

00:03:21: - Yeah, absolutely. I mean we saw

00:03:23: like a massive increase in sales.

00:03:25: - Yeah. - In 2020, 2021.

00:03:28: Because obviously everyone was stuck at home.

00:03:31: - Yeah. - And people, therefore,

00:03:35: for one, spent their time learning new things.

00:03:38: That was like the online learning boom that we experienced.

00:03:42: But also in general,

00:03:43: with everyone being at home with

00:03:46: work happening at home,

00:03:47: of course a lot of digital services,

00:03:51: or companies with digital offerings

00:03:54: saw a massive increase in sales and demand.

00:03:57: And that of course led to

00:03:58: a lot of people getting employed there,

00:04:01: because a lot of companies with digital products

00:04:05: grew rapidly, and kind of therefore

00:04:08: decided to hire a lot to keep up with that growth,

00:04:11: and expected future growth.

00:04:13: - And we'll also do our best

00:04:15: to bring in some business perspective into that

00:04:18: because obviously we have a business

00:04:19: for more than seven years now actually.

00:04:21: And our thought on that is, besides that,

00:04:23: or actually, in addition to this demand that we see

00:04:26: that growth in the digital industry,

00:04:29: the market was also perfect for it,

00:04:31: because we have low interest rates back then.

00:04:33: Companies saw maybe even

00:04:36: investment companies, banks, et cetera.

00:04:37: We won't dive into all these details,

00:04:39: that there is a huge market.

00:04:41: So they invested into this area.

00:04:43: I mean obviously Google doesn't need any

00:04:45: big financing I guess,

00:04:45: but there are also many startups, et cetera,

00:04:48: who found that or who saw that online business

00:04:50: is a great opportunity,

00:04:52: and they had the financing capabilities

00:04:54: to get the money in the end to

00:04:55: start or grow their companies.

00:04:57: So, I guess that was the combination of

00:05:00: everybody being at home,

00:05:01: digital products being the trend,

00:05:04: and cheap money. - Yeah, absolutely.

00:05:06: So with cheap money around,

00:05:08: and as you said, this entire trend

00:05:11: to work from home and so on,

00:05:14: obviously a lot of growth happened,

00:05:19: and a lot of hiring happened in various companies.

00:05:23: I mean, we even had extreme scenarios like Google,

00:05:27: or those other very big tech players,

00:05:30: hiring staff just to make sure

00:05:33: that their competitors couldn't hire them,

00:05:35: especially developers.

00:05:37: And that's of course insane if you think about it,

00:05:40: that you pay someone just to do a job

00:05:43: you don't really need to get done,

00:05:45: just to make sure they're not doing that as someone else.

00:05:50: - And actually a good sign, typically,

00:05:52: if things go that crazy, - Yeah.

00:05:54: - Then you see it's a bubble, right?

00:05:56: It's not only true for the tech market.

00:05:58: We could name- - General.

00:05:59: - General markets.

00:06:00: We think about the stock market, et cetera.

00:06:02: We won't dive into this topic now,

00:06:04: but actually this was the point in time

00:06:05: when you actually could have seen,

00:06:06: "Well, I don't think it's gonna continue.

00:06:08: We might go back to normal,

00:06:10: but honestly we also weren't sure

00:06:12: how this continues to be honest.

00:06:13: - Yeah. - Of course,

00:06:14: 'Cause we love what we do.

00:06:15: We loved our business, so things were good.

00:06:17: So everybody thought kind of,

00:06:18: although we saw these warning signs in the end,

00:06:21: I guess nobody wanted to see them,

00:06:23: or said, "Well, but things are fine."

00:06:25: And I think with that,

00:06:27: we can actually already finish this bubble part.

00:06:30: - Yeah. - And now come to the

00:06:31: maybe more interesting,

00:06:32: and actually current stage of that whole thing.

00:06:35: It's the burst of the bubble what we want to call it.

00:06:37: - Yeah, exactly. - So, things went-

00:06:41: - Just downhill. - Yeah, yeah.

00:06:44: I mean, as you said, it was clearly a bubble.

00:06:48: And what what's interesting is, if you're in a bubble,

00:06:51: and I mean the same was true for what we already said,

00:06:54: online course growth and so on.

00:06:58: Of course you maybe see that this is

00:07:01: an extraordinary effect,

00:07:04: an extraordinary event, the pandemic,

00:07:07: and the cheap money around it that led to that growth.

00:07:11: But obviously you don't really want to believe

00:07:15: that it ends at some point,

00:07:17: or you're just not sure.

00:07:19: Because maybe it's the new normal.

00:07:21: I mean, during the pandemic we heard

00:07:23: "new normal" all the time. - Yeah.

00:07:25: - Was it regarding mask mandates,

00:07:28: or regarding economic questions?

00:07:31: - Yeah. The world changed basically to this new normality,

00:07:33: whatever you wanna call it. - Yeah, exactly.

00:07:35: I mean here in Germany,

00:07:36: and I can't imagine it was the same

00:07:38: all over the world.

00:07:39: There was a lot of discussion,

00:07:41: whether people would go back to in-person meetings.

00:07:45: - Yeah. Or fly again.

00:07:46: - Yeah. Exactly. - Or do business trips, etc.

00:07:49: - All those business trips.

00:07:50: So, there was a lot of talk about that not happening again.

00:07:55: That we would scale down to only a few business trips,

00:07:58: and that we would do all those meetings remotely.

00:08:01: And I guess now we're back to

00:08:03: record numbers regarding flights.

00:08:07: Maybe a bigger share of those flights

00:08:09: is still vacation and private stuff.

00:08:12: But still, we have lots of business trips again,

00:08:15: lots of in-person meetings.

00:08:16: Because people also like to see each other.

00:08:19: - Yeah. - You don't wanna

00:08:20: do everything remotely.

00:08:21: And I think that also kind of led to that bubble

00:08:25: that you, whilst you're in that situation,

00:08:29: assume things or make assumptions that are wrong,

00:08:33: but you can't really see them as wrong in that moment.

00:08:37: - But I think the question is also, I totally agree,

00:08:39: but what would you do,

00:08:41: or what would the consequence,

00:08:42: if you would see that the bubble will burst?

00:08:44: If you want to have,

00:08:44: if you're a developer or wanna become a developer?

00:08:47: Would you say in 2021, for example,

00:08:49: "No, I'll quit that now?" - Yeah.

00:08:51: - Probably would say, "No, I'll try my best."

00:08:52: I think it's a great chance to enter this market

00:08:55: to get the skills and the knowledge you need,

00:08:57: to get a job in that area. - Yeah.

00:08:58: - And even if you get fired now,

00:09:00: which is sad, obviously, you might,

00:09:02: you have that knowledge,

00:09:03: and you might be back in the job

00:09:04: in one or two years from now.

00:09:05: So I think it's always difficult to accept

00:09:08: that this is a bubble, or you can accept it,

00:09:11: but what would be the right consequence now?

00:09:13: So I guess it's a difficult situation,

00:09:14: or it was a difficult situation for everyone.

00:09:17: - Yeah. - Many people were happy,

00:09:18: and now we have this burst thing, and yeah.

00:09:21: Now it is what it is. - Yeah. Exactly.

00:09:24: And I agree.

00:09:26: Whilst you're in the bubble,

00:09:27: even if you like feel like,

00:09:28: "This is not normal, this is going to change."

00:09:32: Also, if you run a business,

00:09:34: you of course still wanna ride the wave,

00:09:36: and you don't wanna be the one who says,

00:09:38: "Okay, I am going to pretend this is all not happening,

00:09:42: and then I'll be well prepared once the bubble bursts."

00:09:46: Because what do you do if it doesn't burst,

00:09:48: if it bursts too lately?

00:09:50: Or maybe even you can earn more during the bubble,

00:09:53: than you lose when it bursts? - That's the thing.

00:09:56: And the other crazy thing was,

00:09:57: as we talk about tech industry mainly,

00:10:00: every industry went crazy. - Yeah.

00:10:02: - If you think about the housing market,

00:10:03: the car market, whatever you want to call it,

00:10:05: every industry went went crazy, and saw new heights.

00:10:08: So what basically happened is, in the end,

00:10:10: that this burst that came here,

00:10:13: you could have seen it,

00:10:14: you saw the inflation,

00:10:15: you saw all these things that overheat.

00:10:17: But generally when things

00:10:18: really started to decline was when?

00:10:20: When the interest rates increased.

00:10:21: - Yeah. Oh, of course. - At least in our,

00:10:22: in my opinion, at least in how you see that?

00:10:24: - Yeah. - And,

00:10:26: so the idea is to increase interest rates

00:10:29: to reduce inflation.

00:10:32: So this inflated market kind of bursts, and so.

00:10:34: - Yeah. - We are not

00:10:35: experts in that area,

00:10:36: but at least that's our fault on it, I guess.

00:10:37: - Yeah. - So, and actually it was

00:10:40: kind of the intention of it. - Yeah.

00:10:42: - And now we have the consequence,

00:10:44: and now we're not totally happy.

00:10:45: So it's a kind of a strange situation, I guess.

00:10:47: - Yeah, that's true.

00:10:48: But on the other hand, I mean,

00:10:50: what you said earlier is,

00:10:52: what does this mean for developers?

00:10:54: Or was it a bad idea to kind of become a developer

00:10:58: now that we had all these layoffs?

00:11:00: And I think if we come back to, to this question,

00:11:04: it's important to understand

00:11:07: that all these massive layoffs we're seeing

00:11:09: are of course happening to a huge

00:11:11: degree in the tech market,

00:11:12: because this market has been exceptionally inflated.

00:11:16: But we're not only talking about developers being laid off,

00:11:20: like, we see layoffs across a broad variety of divisions.

00:11:24: It's likely that a significant

00:11:26: part of that laid off workforce are developers,

00:11:29: but it's not all developers.

00:11:32: And it's easy to overlook,

00:11:34: that not all those developers who are getting laid off,

00:11:38: are now unemployed. - Yeah.

00:11:40: - Instead, they are still are loads of opportunities

00:11:44: for developers, just maybe not at the moment,

00:11:48: at those big Google, Meta, Amazon and so on companies,

00:11:53: but maybe smaller companies.

00:11:56: Not super small, but smaller companies.

00:11:58: And that can actually be a great opportunity.

00:12:01: And it's great for the overall economy, I guess.

00:12:03: - It is. And I think it's important to understand this

00:12:06: as somebody who's looking for a job in the area.

00:12:08: We know that back when we studied right,

00:12:09: you always wanted to be have the job at the big company.

00:12:11: - Exactly. Yeah. - That's a typical thing,

00:12:13: a normal thing.

00:12:14: But not necessarily that job at the big company,

00:12:17: with the big name is the best job for you.

00:12:19: - Yeah. - So as you said,

00:12:20: if you have the skills,

00:12:21: then try something else,

00:12:21: and find a job at another company,

00:12:23: where you might have more things to do,

00:12:24: where you might learn more.

00:12:26: Because you can really change things in there.

00:12:28: And that's maybe also something

00:12:30: that we should think about

00:12:31: or consider in the current market.

00:12:32: And therefore, I guess our take at the moment,

00:12:35: is for this whole developer crisis as I would call it,

00:12:38: we are basically back to normal, right?

00:12:40: - Yeah. Sure. - So that's all that happened.

00:12:42: And maybe we are a bit overcorrecting

00:12:45: at some companies maybe. - Sure.

00:12:47: - But at least our thought,

00:12:48: or what we see in the overall market, it's not that bad.

00:12:51: - Yeah. - I mean, it's not good,

00:12:52: obviously, but it's also not bad.

00:12:53: No developers need it anymore.

00:12:55: Everything's gonna crash.

00:12:56: And actually we are not fans of that, to be honest.

00:12:58: We always think there are opportunities,

00:12:59: and things to do, and things to learn.

00:13:01: And I think the attitude of saying "Everything is so bad,"

00:13:03: that's not how we think.

00:13:04: And I also think the world doesn't work like that.

00:13:06: - No. - So I think we have

00:13:07: an okay situation now, with some issues,

00:13:10: but if you like development,

00:13:12: learning it now is not a worse choice than it was in 2019.

00:13:16: - No, I would say,

00:13:17: it's not a bad profession to have, I'd say.

00:13:20: There are always opportunities.

00:13:21: I mean, alone, the,

00:13:24: if you just considered the opportunity

00:13:26: of starting your own thing, your own digital business,

00:13:30: that's something super attractive,

00:13:31: which not a lot of people have.

00:13:33: Because it's so natural for us developers,

00:13:36: we can start almost any online based business

00:13:41: with, almost without any cost.

00:13:43: And that's not the same if you're,

00:13:46: if you're a carpenter, for example,

00:13:47: you have significant investments to make

00:13:50: before you can open up a business.

00:13:51: So that's a huge advantage.

00:13:53: But even if you're not interested

00:13:55: in starting your own business,

00:13:56: there are plenty of jobs. - Yeah.

00:13:58: - And as you mentioned, a job at a smaller company,

00:14:02: and we're still talking about

00:14:04: big companies like Walmart, for example.

00:14:05: - Yeah. - Huge employer.

00:14:09: Maybe there are more interesting jobs there.

00:14:11: Because it's often that the smaller,

00:14:13: the non-mainstream tech companies

00:14:16: that may have pretty interesting jobs,

00:14:19: where you may also have more responsibility

00:14:22: than you would have in at a such a big tech company.

00:14:25: Because they need the new people,

00:14:26: the fresh people that have the latest knowledge,

00:14:29: and wanna make things better maybe in the company.

00:14:31: - Yeah. - And not the way

00:14:32: they did it 10 years ago,

00:14:33: or for the last 10 years. - Exactly. Absolutely.

00:14:34: - So, in our opinion, as you said,

00:14:36: this whole tech industry and development market is good.

00:14:39: Of course, we're biased by the way.

00:14:40: It's our job, our profession, our passion.

00:14:43: But, if you think about it as objective as possible,

00:14:46: there are definitely diverse professions

00:14:47: that you can follow or learn.

00:14:49: So. - Yeah. And I think it,

00:14:51: it's, it's not just our, our bias,

00:14:53: which of course exists,

00:14:54: but if you take a look at forecasts,

00:14:58: which forecast has significant growth

00:15:00: in developer jobs over the next years.

00:15:03: So if you'll take a look at the unemployment rate, which is,

00:15:06: which didn't skyrocket over the last year.

00:15:09: And I'm also talking about the

00:15:10: unemployment rate for tech workers,

00:15:13: for developers and so on.

00:15:14: So all these are are good signs that as,

00:15:17: as you said,

00:15:18: that we're just back to this normal state.

00:15:21: But there still isn't,

00:15:23: we're still not living in a world where,

00:15:25: as a developer- - You wouldn't find a job

00:15:28: or something like that.

00:15:29: - And I think that also brings us

00:15:31: to the maybe last core point of our first podcast year.

00:15:34: Because besides the economic trouble,

00:15:36: as you might wanna call it,

00:15:38: there is another thing that we talk about

00:15:40: for more than a year now.

00:15:41: It's AI, basically.

00:15:43: It's AI, it's new.

00:15:44: It came in extremely fast actually.

00:15:48: Maybe unexpected also, also for us by the way,

00:15:50: kind of, I must say.

00:15:51: And now the question is, okay,

00:15:53: we have this downturn back to normal,

00:15:54: but now we have this new element, this AI topic.

00:15:57: - Yeah. - And this is the last thing

00:15:59: we need to kill all developer jobs, all tech jobs.

00:16:02: And that's also the last core area

00:16:04: we wanna focus on now on the podcast.

00:16:05: And yeah, I must say that now we're sitting here together,

00:16:08: but I guess your opinion on that is maybe quite interesting.

00:16:11: So what are your quick takes on that AI thing?

00:16:14: We'll dive into it in more details,

00:16:15: but first thing if I told you,

00:16:17: "Okay, Max, you're a developer,

00:16:18: your job will be gone in two years."

00:16:19: What is your, what are your thoughts actually on that?

00:16:21: - So for one, I think one important thing to note

00:16:24: that the layoffs we're seeing have nothing to do with AI.

00:16:28: We're not having these layoffs because

00:16:30: companies suddenly replace all those developers with AI,

00:16:34: but instead, for one,

00:16:36: it's not just developers getting laid off,

00:16:37: as we mentioned before, and second,

00:16:39: the developers who are getting laid off,

00:16:42: are simply not needed.

00:16:43: They're not replaced by AI, they're not needed.

00:16:45: Now, looking forward, of course,

00:16:48: it's possible that AI replaces some jobs.

00:16:53: I mean, we already have tools like GitHub Copilot,

00:16:57: which make developers more efficient

00:17:00: because they suggest code, big code blocks,

00:17:05: and allow you to write code quicker,

00:17:07: and come up with solutions,

00:17:08: or implement solutions quicker.

00:17:10: - Yeah. - So we have that.

00:17:13: And that might lead to maybe fewer developers

00:17:17: needed by an individual company in the future.

00:17:20: At the same time,

00:17:22: that of course also opens up new opportunities,

00:17:25: because there may be companies

00:17:27: who previously weren't able to

00:17:30: build a specific application or a product,

00:17:33: because they needed more developers

00:17:35: than they were able to afford.

00:17:37: And now with developers becoming more efficient,

00:17:40: such companies suddenly may be able to hire developers

00:17:44: to build certain applications,

00:17:45: because they don't need men that many of them.

00:17:48: - Yeah. Yeah. - And I guess that's

00:17:49: how it has always been.

00:17:51: Not just in the tech industry,

00:17:53: but in the entire history of our economy,

00:17:57: that we got new tools,

00:17:58: and those tools maybe replaced some employees,

00:18:03: but led to an even higher demand in the same,

00:18:07: or a bit more skilled employees with,

00:18:09: who were able to use these tools to,

00:18:13: to generate or to build new products,

00:18:16: and to empower companies to do more.

00:18:19: - As you said, said, it's a normal thing,

00:18:21: if think about the whole industrialization.

00:18:23: - Yeah. - That happened.

00:18:24: Everybody thought, or we read at least,

00:18:25: "Okay, won't have to work anymore."

00:18:27: - Yeah. - As it turned out,

00:18:28: there are still lots of things to do.

00:18:29: And I think that's how things will go in the future.

00:18:32: - Of course, nobody can predict the future.

00:18:34: We also can't, we can't just take

00:18:35: the facts we have right now.

00:18:37: But I guess that what you said

00:18:38: about the new opportunities,

00:18:40: that smaller companies can build more complex things

00:18:43: with less developers is a good aspect.

00:18:47: But also I think that we need maybe

00:18:50: think in a way that developers

00:18:51: also need to adapt the knowledge a bit more.

00:18:53: You need to be able to code,

00:18:55: but you also need to be able to use those AI tools.

00:18:57: - Absolutely. - As I said, like Co-pilot.

00:18:59: But we have a ChatGPT course, as you might know.

00:19:01: And when we created that course,

00:19:04: we also saw lots of things

00:19:05: that we have to teach people,

00:19:07: that we learn on our own, by the way,

00:19:08: first, how to use these tools.

00:19:09: - Yeah, makes sense. And same thing applies to developers.

00:19:11: If you want to use GitHub Copilot in your project, fine,

00:19:14: but you have to know the,

00:19:15: the core skills, how react works,

00:19:17: by the way, what a component is.

00:19:18: - Absolutely. - If you don't know that,

00:19:19: then GitHub Co-pilot

00:19:20: just gives you bunch of suggestions,

00:19:22: which won't help at all,

00:19:23: to build a working complex application.

00:19:25: - And that's a very good point.

00:19:27: As developers, the main thing we do is solve problems.

00:19:32: We're not code generators.

00:19:34: I mean, we write code, that is what we do.

00:19:37: But that's not the hard part once you learned it.

00:19:41: The hard part is to write the right code

00:19:43: for a given problem.

00:19:45: And the problems can vary quite a bit.

00:19:48: You have different constraints,

00:19:49: different requirements for different applications.

00:19:52: And that is the tricky part,

00:19:54: writing the right code for a given problem.

00:19:57: And AI can help there.

00:20:00: But at the moment,

00:20:01: and I'm very doubtful that this will change

00:20:04: in the near or midterm future,

00:20:06: AI is not capable of writing

00:20:09: entire code basis of complex applications,

00:20:13: with complex requirements and specifications.

00:20:17: And I'm very confident that this is an area

00:20:20: where we'll still need developers in many years to come,

00:20:24: who are empowered by AI but not replaced.

00:20:28: - And even if AI could write all the code,

00:20:31: create all the applications, et cetera,

00:20:33: I think there is one,

00:20:35: one thought in my mind at least,

00:20:37: there will be something to do if you know something.

00:20:39: That's the, that's the point. - Yeah.

00:20:40: - I guess even if this worst case comes,

00:20:43: then we'll we will be able to do something.

00:20:45: And I think that's our attitude, I guess,

00:20:47: and all, I think that's how you should approach things.

00:20:49: - And I think therefore,

00:20:51: that's basically our take on this AI topic.

00:20:54: - Yeah. - And this entire layoff.

00:20:58: Does it still make sense to become a developer thing?

00:21:01: - So you say, yes, it does make sense?

00:21:04: - I would say, it does make sense.

00:21:06: We're just back to the normal

00:21:09: we had before the pandemic,

00:21:10: and that normal, we shouldn't forget,

00:21:12: that was a strong growth in developer jobs.

00:21:15: - Such a good point.

00:21:16: This market grew for years and years and years.

00:21:18: - And it's going to keep growing.

00:21:20: - We have the internet since when?

00:21:21: 20 years, 24 years.

00:21:23: So you know what I mean, we have it longer,

00:21:24: but really for the main public-.

00:21:26: - The mainstream. - Yeah. Yeah.

00:21:27: - So I think this, our thought process is

00:21:30: so it became so, how do we call it?

00:21:33: We only think in short periods of time.

00:21:34: - Yeah. - It's so narrow. Yeah.

00:21:36: - So narrow. Indeed. Yeah. Thank you.

00:21:37: It's narrow. And so I guess our take is really,

00:21:40: things are difficult now, yes,

00:21:42: but if you think about the last five years,

00:21:44: it's not that bad.

00:21:45: And we'll see what the next months and years bring.

00:21:49: But no need to be totally worried, I guess.

00:21:51: - Absolutely not. And I mean,

00:21:53: there also maybe as a finishing thought,

00:21:57: at least from my side,

00:21:59: there also is like an effect from that pandemic,

00:22:02: and from that AI boom,

00:22:04: that I guess will stick around,

00:22:06: that we now have more and more opportunities

00:22:11: in the digital space, like the pandemic,

00:22:13: obviously we didn't totally switch to a new normal

00:22:17: where everything is done remotely,

00:22:18: but we now have more flexible

00:22:21: remote work agreements in many companies.

00:22:23: - Yeah.

00:22:24: - We also saw that certain tools,

00:22:28: certain remote meeting tools like Zoom,

00:22:31: can be efficient replacements

00:22:33: for some meetings at least.

00:22:35: And these effects I think will stick around.

00:22:38: And that of course,

00:22:40: gives us plenty of new areas of

00:22:43: opportunity for developers, for developers,

00:22:46: because we have more digital

00:22:49: businesses than we had before the pandemic.

00:22:51: We have more use cases for digital services.

00:22:55: And even though we maybe don't need them

00:22:58: as much as some people thought during the pandemic,

00:23:01: it's also not like we don't need them at all.

00:23:03: - Yeah. - So combined with the growth

00:23:06: we had before the pandemic, and before all that,

00:23:09: I think we now have an even better starting situation.

00:23:12: - Yeah. - And the same with AI,

00:23:14: which improves our efficiency,

00:23:16: and also opens up many new,

00:23:18: interesting business opportunities and so on.

00:23:21: - I guess it's as always,

00:23:22: and then we'll conclude this,

00:23:23: it's not only digital or non-digital.

00:23:26: - Yeah. - It's a mix in the end.

00:23:27: - Absolutely. - So in the end,

00:23:28: these tools help humans to live their life,

00:23:32: to do their job, whatever.

00:23:33: And that's the outcome I think we see at the moment.

00:23:36: And with that, I guess we'll finish that podcast now.

00:23:41: - Yeah. Yeah, thanks. - We hope you like it.

00:23:42: - Thanks. - Thanks for being part.

00:23:44: We hope you liked it.

00:23:45: Definitely share your feedback with us.

00:23:46: - Yeah. Yeah. - We'll do more. (laughs)

00:23:48: - We'll do more. And let us know what your thoughts

00:23:50: on this entire situation are.

00:23:52: Maybe some aspects we didn't talk about,

00:23:55: some aspects you agree or disagree.

00:23:56: And we then hopefully see you back in our next episode.

00:24:00: - Indeed. And you can also let us know

00:24:02: if you have any topics in mind

00:24:04: that we should talk about, or could talk about.

00:24:06: So thank you. - Thank you.