There is obviously no magic to making predictions, but, at their core, predictions are based upon taking your core worldview and extrapolating that out into potential outcomes. Or at least the bold predictions are.
So what happens when you no longer have trust in your core worldview? You can’t build predictions on sinking ground. They need a solid ground. In the past, I had some fundamental beliefs that have been largely demolished by events in the industry, my country and the world in recent years. So, I hate to say it but, be warned, my predictions are bleak.
P.S. In case you missed it, I graded my last year predictions. Some motivated reasoning led a couple of my predictions astray, hurting my overall grade. Given the bleakness of this year’s predictions, I hope I am equally, if not more, wrong.
Jobs tread water. Benefits and diversity continue to get pulled back
Tech layoffs continued unabated in 2024. Based on data from Layoffs.fyi, “2024 saw more than 150,000 job cuts across 542 companies” (source). Yes, we had some over-hiring and over-investment during the pandemic, which led to a sharp downturn at some companies when people’s behavior and purchasing shifted back to normal, but it’s difficult to argue that the continued layoffs and downtrend 4 years later is still lingering pandemic.
In my view, the rise of AI and the continued tech job slump in an otherwise strong economy are two related trends. AI is squeezing the tech job market from two sides. First, company leaders believe that they can squeeze ever more productivity out of their workers using AI (and even, in some cases, replace workers outright). It remains to be seen whether these expected productivity gains materialize (I am skeptical). On the other end, though, running AI is expensive and companies are investing heavily into this (including the power and water necessary to run these, which is a whole separate issue as well). This means that they are shutting investments in other areas, including in people, to fund AI (I suppose you could call it laying off real people to fund building fake ones, now that I think of it).
If you can call this good news, I don’t expect the layoffs to continue as much in 2025. I feel as though companies are finally reaching a point where there may not be as much room for cuts. Many teams are running incredibly leanly.
That being said, I expect employee benefits as well as diversity initiatives to continue to get pulled back. We’ve already seen the industry bending the knee to the new administration and also using the opportunity to end diversity programs. Yes, for many tech companies, the diversity initiatives were just performative, but it’s becoming obvious that they don’t feel pressure to even just perform the show anymore (in fact, they are likely feeling the opposite pressure).
After I drafted this, we’ve already seen multiple reports of this already happening.
What can we do?
There’s not a lot we can do but hunker down and push back against the worst instincts of the industry (and where possible within our own employers), while also lending a helping hand to our colleagues across the industry who’s livelihood is threatened by layoffs or loss of benefits.
AI slop and misinformation reach a crescendo
Let me start by saying, I don’t hate AI. It may seem like it, but I really do not. I use tools like ChatGPT and Copilot in my everyday work regularly. My team and I are working on potentially leveraging a custom trained AI tool trained on our docs to help people more easily get answers to common problems. I think AI has some areas that it can be incredibly useful.
I am a skeptic of many of the grandiose claims that proponents of AI make. I don’t think it’ll replace people in most cases (though I think companies would like it to) and I don’t want it integrated into every tool. Back in the 90s, every company felt like they had to become a dotcom company, even when it didn’t make sense. It feels much the same around AI. There’s a bubble waiting to burst…but I don’t think it’ll burst this year.
Instead, I think we’ll see the convergence of new rules around moderation (basically a lack thereof) and an empowered fringe in politics around the world combine with easy and cheap availability of AI to consumers to inundate the internet with slop and misinformation.
We’ve already seen this at work on X, where financial incentives around engagement combine with a very selective, authoritarian approach moderation (i.e. only what the ruler likes) to turn the platform into a dumpster fire. Similar things have been happening at Facebook already and are likely to only worsen as Meta effectively ends moderation across Facebook, Instagram and Threads.
For an excellent deeper read on the issues of governance on social platforms, read this post by Erin Kissane.
What can we do?
Personally, I am going to use this as an opportunity to stick more closely with moderated platforms. I also plan to do more to support independent content creators creating original content across various platforms, including some who are doing great work in news generally and even tech news specifically. That won’t stop the slop, but it at least aligns my own efforts towards areas that I feel more comfortable supporting.
Conferences in the US struggle with international attendees absent
Developer conferences in US have had a really rough go. First, there was Trump 1.0, which led to a US tourism slump. There were a number of factors, but the fear of being caught in xenophobic visa restrictions or hate crimes definitely helped dissuade foreigners from coming. I know from speaking to organizers at the time (and being one myself), convincing foreigners to attend US tech conferences became harder.
Then the pandemic hit and everything shut down, meaning conferences lost a year of business (at least) while many still were locked into long term commitments on expensive conference venues. Some of these were renegotiated, but often the terms were still too onerous, especially as the conference recovery was slow.
Just as tech conferences in the US seemed to be on track for a full recovery, the slump in the tech market hit. One of the first benefits to be clawed back were the travel and education budgets. In my observation, this has meant that many big conferences got bigger while smaller ones (often community run) suffered. When you don’t have as much to spend on conferences, you are less likely to take a risk on a lesser known event.
Trump 2.0 hasn’t even started yet and already things are looking significantly worse including the potential of widely expanded visa bans for many countries. Add to that the roll back of the rights or women, minorities and LGBTQ+ folks in many states (including many that are popular conference destinations such as Utah, Florida and Texas) and you have the potential for a total mess. I actually predict that in 2025 many of these trends will finally impact attendance at the larger events that have been healthy until now.
What can we do?
Support the conferences that you care about, especially if those are community run events. This can either be through attending or even sponsoring (if you and/or your employer have budget that you can influence). But it can also be via helping spread the word. As a conference organizer myself, I know how difficult it is to build awareness of an event – especially a smaller, independently-organized one – so just sharing can be impactful.
I Hope I am Wrong
Yeah, these predictions are depressing. I don’t even have positive, uplifting ones to offset them. 🤷♂️ I am personally bracing myself for 2025 to be one of the “downest” (yes, I think I made that word up) of down years as someone working in tech. All I can say is that I truly hope that I am wrong and my outlook was too negative.