I'm inclined to disagree with the nay-sayers.

Been watching a youtube channel called "Mark Moss" who does a pretty 
good analysis of trends, and I just saw a Bloomberg Markets and Finances 
video where the Federal Reserve's Richmond Fed President Thomas Barkin 
stated the Fed will do whatever it takes to control inflation.  Sounds 
like they're going to do something different than the 1930's (we saw how 
well that worked), and something different, maybe, than the late 
1970's/early 1980's. It's my sense that they will ratchet up the 
interest rates in 0.50-0.75% increments.  Personally, I don't know that 
they can do anything different than the 80's with prime at almost 20%.

Worse than the Depression?  I doubt it.  As bad at 2009? Probably worse.

Low interest rates drive businesses to delay hardware investments.  High 
interest rates drive purchases as the same equipment will cost 15-20% 
more next year.  Deflation stifles hardware investment as it will be 10% 
cheaper next year, so why buy now?  (That last sentence is a one-line 
summary of former Fed Chairman Bernanke's essay on the failures of the 
Federal Reserve in the 1930's, and why inflation is intentionally driven 
to run at 2%.)  No matter what happens, layoff's are coming.

So what's an info worker to do?

Be the best in your field.  The marginal folks will get laid off and do 
something different, which clears the field for the rest of us. What 
technology to focus on?  Cloud.  There simply aren't enough 
Cloud-certified architects/engineers and all these companies are rushing 
headlong into the cloud.  Terraform is probably the best platform to 
learn for cloud deployments as it's universal for AWS, GCP, Azure.  Then 
there's Ansible.

Personally, I think competing against someone from India with a 
Bachelor's Degree (or Master's) who will come here and work for $45K is 
ludicrous (my son just got an entry level customer service job for 
$21/hr, which is $42K/year).  Look for something they don't do well - 
orchestration, solution engineering, problem solving.

Don't be a 50 year old coder - it's a dead end.

Regards,

George Toft

On 11/19/2022 7:12 AM, Keith Smith via PLUG-discuss wrote:
>
>
> Hi,
>
> I am reading and watching YouTube videos that say the economy is going 
> to tank to maybe as bad as the depression.
>
> If this is true what skills are going to be in demand.
>
> I suspect there will be a real push to automate things so I'm guessing 
> those who can create browser based business web apps and phone apps 
> will be in high demand.  That will equate to the administrator skills 
> to support such things.
>
> I also expect robotics to become more involved in factories, 
> manufacturing, and even flipping burgers.
>
> What say you?
>
> Thanks!!
>
> Keith
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