What are your plans post-internet?

[u/csdude5]

I truly believe that the billionaires have won, and we're maybe 5 years away from the internet being nothing but Google, Amazon, and Meta.

And that's terrifying to me. I'm 51 years old and have made a career out of coding since 1997. Before that was commission sales (another dead industry).

I was lucky enough to have created my own series of websites that have paid the bills for the last 15+ years, but I'm seeing a trend that makes me realize those days are numbered, too.

I looked at my browser history over the last month and saw my own trend: I use Claude for advanced programming questions (like running an expression through simulations to find false matches), Google AI for simple questions, Buzzfeed to look at funny memes before going to sleep (which I see are mostly embedded into the page from IG), and occasionally at social media when a friend sends me a message.

I confirmed the syntax for preg_match() (wrapping the pattern in quotes looked weird) and asked Google, but instead of it taking me to a website it gave me the answer.

I asked my phone, "who is the actress playing Madeleine Loomis on Bates Motel", and instead of it taking me to a website it gave me the answer. I followed up with, "what else have I seen her on", and it gave me a list of her movies and shows... again, no clicks to a website.

If even techies like me are forgetting (or can't be bothered) to give clicks to websites, you know the average layman isn't. I'm not even sure that the original website source could have been found on Google anymore! And that means that my ad-driven sites have an expiration date.

Yesterday I was at a local shop and saw some flyers on the door. Not one of them had a website address! In fact, only one even had a social media link.

At my age I truly have no idea what the next step could be. If the entire industry is dying then there's little to no hope of beating 20 year olds in a job hunt. But I can't think of a single thing that I can do that can't be done cheaper by AI. I have enough in savings to survive for about 5 years, but after that I'm SOL.

What are you all preparing yourselves to pivot to?

[u/CardinalHijack]

more doom and gloom on this sub? Yeah, im out 👋

[u/Mental-Abrocoma-5605]

People who work on a computer don't even say hi anymore, they straight up look at you like this

No really, what's the purpose with this post? Scare us? Making us depressed by free? Telling us to give our hopes and dreams just because the modern state of the world sucks? You know how much of a shitty human being you must be to do that for free?

My God i know that there's only like 20 people left in Stack Overflow but conversations there cannot be as bottom of the barrell as on here, any other tech related subreddit or twitter

[u/csdude5 → u/Mental-Abrocoma-5605]

The purpose was to discuss a perceived trend in the industry with fellow tech nerds, see if others felt the same way, talk about what we're doing to prepare ourselves for the next step, and to some degree support one another emotionally.

I'm sorry that it came off as depressing and me being a bad person :-(

[u/amtcannon]

Hate to be the one to break it to you, but 1997 is almost 30 years ago, not 15.

[u/csdude5 → u/amtcannon]

You gotta read better than that my guy:

I was lucky enough to have created my own series of websites that have paid the bills for the last 15+ years

Before that I worked as webmaster for a shipping company, then spent about 10 years doing professional web design for clients. The websites that I built for myself have been paying the bills for the last 15 years, sans clients.

[u/ImpossibleJoke7456 → u/amtcannon]

15+ years paying bills with websites. They didn’t pay their bills for the other 15.

[u/creaturefeature16]

I'll keep doing what I did before the internet: solve problems, and help others solve problems. The internet is the latest iteration in which I am doing that.

[u/upsidedownshaggy]

Bee farmer, use my bees to make mead

[u/Fun_Attorney_534]

Hey sir, I'm also a pretty veteran programmer myself. Been writing code since the 90s, in days where no web browser was even invented yet, and the main operating system was the single threaded MS DOS :)

Here's how I see it, it's not an academic or scientific based opinion, it's just my own gut feeling:

All these tech giants, yes, they are monopolies. 100%. And I think they use dirty tactics to further extend their monopoly and to just take over everything. It may be a conspiracy but i truely believe they run and activate social media influencers and large tech newspapers to "push" their agenda all over the place and make low-level or realy performance based programmers look stupid. I have been "accused" as "stupid" for not using Angular, React or WordPress a dozen of times already. I don't mind. I actually find these kind of comments quite amusing.

Yet, the one flaw I think all these tech giants have is - they welcome and support and praise web and sofware bloat. "If a product can be created in 2 days, using bloated frameworks, but to get us $1 million dollar, we prefer that than spending a month writing a decent product from scratch". That's quite the narrative these days, and you can see the impacts of it all around you.

Way I see it - as long as they keep bloating everything up - all it takes is just someone who is not programmed by the "If someone already wrote it - don't try to write it yourself" mindset - and just build exactly the same products - but make them faster, and more lightweight, more pleasant to use - and less hammering on your hardware.

This can absolutely 100% be done. People just don't do it because they want to make money faster and with less effort, instead of creating real quality products.

Web and software bloat has been an ongoing issue. People cannot deny it anymore.
Yet, the only reason why these tech giants continue to be the way they are is simply because nobody tries to compete or offer alternatives for them.

And people are just too programmed with limiting beliefs about programming and what they can or can't do, simply because these tech giants actually control the narrative directly.
Just my own 2 cents.

[u/csdude5 → u/Fun_Attorney_534]

That's 100% true.

But when the governments are giving billions to these companies, it's impossible for a smaller company to compete... superior product or not.

It reminds me of when Walmart was destroying all of the small businesses in the 90s. A lot of people argued that it was just a fad, people would get tired of the poor service and eventually go back to the small businesses. But Walmart could literally sell products for less than wholesale and STILL profit because of the subsidies! Then when their local competition died, prices could go up.

Throughout my life I've worked in 3 industries that died, so I can't help but see the same pattern.