Programming

He sounds a bit depressed, yes.

It might be right that part of the software industry has just entered a downward spiral like a stalled jet. They could not make anything of value and quality and have commited to lower quality, less value, in a race to the earth surface.

Consumers don't demand better quality because their expectations have reached zero. What these companies produce is worthless to them.

But there exist other areas where software delivers massive value and I think in two years or so, good developers which still know how to code and to maintain and debug old stuff, will be worth their weight in gold for such companies, because the sloppers won't be up to the job.

Also, paradoxically, I think this will make companies to rely more on open source. In the last weeks I heard from two different companies that their suppliers - firms which were delivering stepper motors with firmware and such - are not any more able to make their stuff work. One company has resorted to do the testing for their supplier.

And there is a lot of software that needs to work. More than ever.

This is why companies are resentful towards software developers: They need them.