Over the years, I have accumulated a really sweet desk setup: standing desk, Herman Miller chair, Kinesis Advantage, BenQ programming monitor, nice lighting, decent audio setup, etc. I have a dedicated office, entirely separated from the rest of the house.
It's great, but I think being dependent on all that stuff can make you soft. I still do some of my best work from my laptop in the garden, coffee shops, the library, etc.
(Assuming that LLM does indeed multiply productivity)
We are likely in for some rough days, as it's much easier to just fire people and maintain the same level of productivity. Musk (arguably) did that with Twitter, even before this started. I was impacted by a post-COVID layoff, myself.
But do you think that once that has leveled out a bit, the bandwidth/market bottleneck you referenced will be identified as the new bottleneck[0]? Like, new businesses will launch, or existing companies will identify new growth areas that they did not have the capacity to move into.
I don't know how to respond to your second paragraph. Looking in that direction is a bit too overwhelming.
[0] I think this was always the problem, not developer productivity
Yeah I don't disagree with him on a lot of the substance, but it's more about the tone of his writing (there's like 20+ exclamation marks in that article). Listening to his podcast, he is even more insufferable. It just has a feeling of "preaching to the choir", and as the parent commenter stated, it gives you a feeling that he is following where the wind is blowing.
It's only a feeling that I have, but I think that some folks live in a scarcity mindset, where they are only barely holding on to what they have. Note that this does not actually have to be their lived reality - you can be rich and think this way. Trying to adjust the system to "give more" to other people means less available to them. Sort of a zero-sum perspective on the world. If someone else gains, that means I lose.
This logic is fundamentally flawed. Pointing this out to people (often in strong language) makes them defensive. This creates the perfect combination to get people to vote against their best interests.
It's not about "being progressive" or "elite". It's about playing to the fears of people who are already fearful.
It's great, but I think being dependent on all that stuff can make you soft. I still do some of my best work from my laptop in the garden, coffee shops, the library, etc.
To each their own.