My experience in a large US city is surprisingly the opposite. The toy stores I visit are doing great. I suspect this is is because a large portion of their business is for birthday parties.
I assumed many or most were gone because of Amazon. But after having kids and getting gifts for birthday parties, I've learned there are a lot of them and they are doing healthy business. Almost always a line on weekends.
Many or most in line take advantage of free gift wrap because they're on their way to a party.
In many ways it is more convenient than Amazon because you're going out anyway, why not get it at the last second with careful gift wrapping.
But even a recent trip to the suburbs surprised me. The Lego store in the mall had a velvet rope and long line of kids waiting to get in. I had never seen anything like this and apparently it is usually this busy.
It is true commercial versions are slightly more expensive. But this is the tradeoff of buying something more durable and meant to be used continuously.
But it's not true that they are difficult to buy.
For my two examples: Commercial washer/dryer sets available through any appliance dealer. Commercial hospitality TVs and other commercial electronics are available via Grainger.
This is an interesting and more apt way to frame smart features.
One way I've found to avoid objects that come alive is to buy the commercial version.
- TVs aimed at commercial hospitality businesses let you avoid a lot of the bloatware and smart features that come bundled with it
- Commercial washer/dryers let you avoid bluetooth and wifi and other junk not needed to wash your clothes. These are available without the coin operated features
Commercial versions of consumer products are usually simpler, more durable, and don't have advertising and smart features.
It appears personal devices were also impacted by this via Microsoft Intune. That app is presented to employees as a way to get their email/slack on their personal device without giving IT systems access to it.
IT systems around the country say that they have no access to your personal data and there they can only block access to Intune apps.
But the linked reddit thread[1] in this article notes personal devices getting wiped and locked out.
As I have heard from mid level managers and C suite types across a few dev jobs. Staff are the largest expense and the technology department is the largest cost center. I disagree because Sales couldn't exist with a product but that's a lost point.
This is why those same mid level managers and C suite people are salivating over AI and mentioning it in every press release.
The reality is that costs are being reduced by replacing US teams with offshore teams. And the layoffs are being spun as a result of AI adoption.
AI tools for software development are here to stay and accelerate in the coming months and years and there will be advances. But cost reductions are largely realized via onshore/offshore replacement.
The remaining onshore teams must absorb much more slack and fixes and in a way end up being more productive.
>Primarily because web search these days is so shitty but that’s besides the point.
Obviously there are a lot of reasons for this. But I think one of the most important reasons is that there is so few organic interesting content destinations anymore.
Sure there are some neat shopify stores, news sites, and a few dedicated souls keeping up blogs. But so much of the casual browsing that the web once was has been obliterated by the move to social media.
And what hasn't moved is now a mess of AI generated fluff or link farms.
I used to think Google made search worse to increase ad revenue. And maybe it's tangentially related. But the stuff I used to search for and find and get inspiration from has moved to walled gardens. Reddit is one of the few remaining open web destinations left.
Almost all tech CEOs think we want an AI button on every window, every app, every dialog. Always there no matter what to make workers more productive or need fewer workers or whatever.
The reality is that even the most ardent supporters of AI want it only in a single web page or in their IDE and that's about it.
And all of these outages happening not long after most of them dismissed a large amount of experienced staff while moving jobs offshore to save in labor costs.
Interesting insight. High interest rates keep new startups low. Well, not counting AI startups I guess.
And the lack of new (non-AI) startups allows bloated incumbents to get by without innovating or offering new products. Quality destroying measures like offshoring and outsourcing are easier to pull off. As is allowing services and standards to slide.
Maybe we'll only know once interest rates come back down. Or once the AI-replacing-workers veil has been lifted.
I think this dynamic is an under appreciated source of the chart that shows the decoupling of the job market with the stock market [1]
In the past large developments would win over local government support with promises of jobs and investment in the local economy.
Now the only promises are a strained grid, higher energy bills and loud noise. It doesn't help that AI has been falsely attributed as the reason to lay people off in the past few years by CEOs who are actually just cutting costs or moving jobs offshore.
This situation probably gets worse before it gets better for the companies deploying new data centers.
But I think the more important point is the increasing number of layoffs linked in the article [1]. These layoffs are mostly ignored here and everywhere else.
Jobs are getting offshored and outsourced in large quantities and the tech community is on the whole ambivalent about it. Unless you were directly impacted.
The path for software developers looks bleak. While people are wringing their hands over AI while something else entirely is destroying job prospects for young grads.
Every time one of Zitron's posts come up I think of bitcoin or algorithmic social media feeds. Like those things, I understand people have strong opinions on whether or not it's good or bad for society.
But what's the endgame? Is it to persuade people not to use these things? Make them illegal? Create some other technology that makes them obsolete or non-functional?
Tech employers are saying it's efficiencies gained in AI that led to layoffs for the past few years. Yet they have increased headcount in engineering offices in other countries at the same time.
This is also happening at small and midsize companies that ship software. It's easy to find this information, particularly for the largest companies like Amazon, Microsoft, and Google.
Like the article states, there are a number of confounding factors. But it's not AI, no matter how much founders and CEOs want it to be true.
I assumed many or most were gone because of Amazon. But after having kids and getting gifts for birthday parties, I've learned there are a lot of them and they are doing healthy business. Almost always a line on weekends.
Many or most in line take advantage of free gift wrap because they're on their way to a party.
In many ways it is more convenient than Amazon because you're going out anyway, why not get it at the last second with careful gift wrapping.
But even a recent trip to the suburbs surprised me. The Lego store in the mall had a velvet rope and long line of kids waiting to get in. I had never seen anything like this and apparently it is usually this busy.