Subj : Re: market change due to
To   : Arelor
From : Dr. What
Date : Sun Sep 14 2025 09:55:00

-=> Arelor wrote to Dart <=-

 Ar> Unpopular opinion here: IT as a sector is bound to enter a crisis
 Ar> because so much IT personal is producing no value at all.

But that happens cyclically.  The Y2K cleanout, the .COM bubble, etc.

 Ar> I am talking about startups working on products everybody but the
 Ar> owners know are not viable, things like that. I think there is a shift
 Ar> going on because the people owning the enterprises are starting to
 Ar> realize they are pouring money in vaporware and that is leading to
 Ar> cuts.

Yup, that's how it starts.

 Ar> AI is being used as an escapegoat for these sort of adjustments but
 Ar> half the time what I see is departments who were working on vaporware
 Ar> are getting canned or reassigned to productive work.

From my point of view, what's happening is this:
Some managers (i.e. morons) are reading articles in their manager magazines
(also written by morons) that are claiming that they can reduce IT staff by
using AI.  So they are jumping on the bandwagon to just have AI make all their
software.

I've been in IT for more than 30 years, so I've seen this many times.  CASE
tools, offshore contractors, etc.  Companies that try this out the right way
come away with licking their wounds and vowing never to do this again - but in
another 10 years they'll get another moron manager...

Companies that do this the wrong way will end up with a decimated IT dept that
can't get anything done - and they can't get any people but the lowest
performers to come work for them.  (If any of you saw what happened to KMart's
IT dept, you'd know.)

 Ar> things without which you would have no internet in half America. The
 Ar> vibes I get when talking to them is that IT companies are way oversized
 Ar> because they have so many useless activity going on. It is no wonder
 Ar> people gets sacked eventually. At some point, bubbles burst.

This happens to every company, in every dept. over time.  What happens is that
you get some managers that like to play the "I have more people than you do"
game with the other managers.  Then they hire in team leaders who are idiots
but don't want anyone under them smarter than them.  So instead of having 3
people do the work, they have to hire 30 poor performers.

At some point, it's unsustainable and they clean house.  Out go the poor
performers and the problem (but competent) ones.  If they do it right, all the
good people stay with a leaner and less political IT dept.  If they do it
wrong, shortly after they get rid of all the bad ones, all the good ones will
leave for better jobs.

I've been through at least 4 of these "house cleanings".  In every case, the
end result was a better IT dept. since we didn't have to deal with the
politics/drama and abusive people.  And in every case, about 10 years later, we
were right back to the same environment that caused the "cleanings".

Why?  Because the "house cleanings" didn't include the managers that caused the
problems in the first place.


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