Free Lunch

 The latest happenings in the realms of the crypto business and social media giants are confirming the thesis that "the free market will always regulate itself". The IT&C people with some business acumen or analytical skills were aware that changes were around the corner in both noisy domains.

In my opinion using crypto does make sense for exchanging currencies in certain unusual situations, but neither for regular shopping nor for savings. In general, supporting a cult of tricky guys at the expense of creative and hardworking people is leading to a non-resilient society.

In contrast to the web3 projects absorbing numerous juniors, the big social media companies were trying to attract seasoned workforce and retaining top talents. The novelty of digital marketing technologies and user tracking produced a hype around the AI algorithms developed and maintained by social media giants, and it generated a big number of jobs.

The data collected by user tracking can be used for showing personalized content to the user, for market analysis, and various predictions. As most people won't pay a membership fee for using social media, these companies are making money with adverts.

Over the years Facebook reinvented itself as the main global facilitator of local businesses, but Twitter was trying to keep an acceptable balance between offering a great experience to their unique mesh of communities and showing targeted adverts. 

While Facebook has been growing an algorithm focused on precisely targeted adverts and content of the user's liking, Twitter was building an algorithm meant to bring together people interested in similar ideas, activities, or projects. In this respect Twitter's algorithm was offering a unique social value - at least until the company's recent acquisition.

In 2016 LinkedIn was acquired by Microsoft and repurposed as a hiring & carrier building site. I consider that for the time being their social media features are not really relevant. 

In 2019 the free tier of Google+ was shut down. They concluded that they got too many challenges for the existing user base. In other words, running an average social media site needs paying subscribers. In order to get the economies of scale necessary for supporting a freemium package (free lunch) the minimum number of unique users could be around 200 million - that would explain E.M.s great interest in counting the bots.

Enterprise vs Commercial Apps

 From the user's point of view there is no clear difference between them. The marketing narrative has always been that an app used in various big companies is a safe choice for small-medium businesses. You know.. if this or that cool-looking app is used in X company by thousands of executives, then it must be great for your shop.

From the developer's point of view the landscape has changed drastically during the last decades. In the 80s the hardware and software were not too sophisticated, it was possible to draft a compiler in a couple of weeks. Nowadays in a couple of weeks we may get ready the first demo of an app based on existing frameworks, third-party components, and services.

Over the years the software development tools have grown in complexity, have gone through differentiation and specialization processes in order to serve a rapidly growing number of domains and use cases.

As a result an IT&C student willing to work at an enterprise needs to acquire experience in specific ERP or CRM software. Configuring and administering standardized cloud-based solutions, and creating workflows with their designer extensions require a significant learning curve.

In case our IT&C student is willing to work in a software shop, he or she needs to acquire experience in  scripting languages, tools, and procedures came into existence for growing and maintaining commercial apps. Mastering all that also needs much time and dedication.

A specialist in enterprise software needs professional reconversion and years of experience to become specialist in commercial software, and vice versa, because both domains are evolving and changing rapidly.

And who is the winner? The infrastructure guys. Always. We all need a well functioning network infrastructure. That's why the software giants are investing in data centers, submarine cables, satellites, and security.

Relativization

Two years ago many millions of jobs have disappeared practically overnight, and people facing eviction or living on welfare were pushed to start shifting towards a new economic structure.

At present my zone is covered by half a dozen of delivery networks, and some of their agents are using  handhelds with great software - so where there is a will, there is a way.

The employees required to work from home have faced a more or less tough accommodation period. While telecommuting is not a new invention, it's an entirely different story if you've chosen that lifestyle as a good fit for your personality, or you were required to stay at home against your wish.

The protagonists of the big resignation are people with sufficient financial reserves to carry out successfully a professional reconversion, or their skillsets are currently in high demand. These guys have  experienced the pros and cons of their work environments, and have decided that they have enough.

The big quit is not a phenomenon in the Silicon Walley but a general tendency, including my country. People facing the passing away of a loved one are experiencing high stress levels, even if not entirely consciously. In most cases this process is determining them to reconsider their goals, plans, and priorities.

Working from home is great while we can meet in person whenever we want, because those water cooler conversations have always been the best quality food for our brains. The undesired isolation made us understood that we are social beings, we need each other to become our best selves.

The too frequent and too  long virtual meetings have triggered debates about how good or bad is agile,  Jira, and many other productivity tools. Is the wire or software the culprit for someone loving to listen his/her own voice, or not ready to organize his/her ideas, or pushing for nonsense processes? 

Quitting is about following our own calling without hurting others. The pandemic taught us to relativize the importance of money in our lives, and to value people more than processes.