There's a big difference between A Peak and The Peak. Cobblers hit The Peak of their employment numbers long in the past; but software still dominates the world. What I've observed:

Uninvested VC funds are still at extremely high levels (or as those in the industry call it: dry powder) [1]. There's some sources which report that aggregate counts are down relative to 2021, but only marginally; its still higher than 2019 levels. Part of that is because of the next bullet point (low investment activity), but another big part is: the Fed printed the majority of US Dollars in circulation within the past two years.

But VC investments are way down for 2022 [2]. Near-peak money, but low investment activity. VCs are just acting more conservatively. The economic slowdown has a big part to play in this, but days go by with bullish markets, low unemployment, pressure (from the UN, most recently) on the Fed to stop raising rates, a return to QE by the BoE, food on the shelves... as they say, the money is burning a hole in their pocket, investors expect returns, and it needs to be spent. I've heard one insider say that 2022Q3-2023Q1 may be one of the best times to seek VC funding, ever.

I think you're right that "management will force efficiency". I think this is a death sentence for many tech companies, especially as we talk about bigger ones; but they'll do it anyway.

- Killing moonshots is a classic round 1 for layoffs; but those moonshots are oftentimes what drives such high ratios for these companies; buzzwordy future revenue potential that sometimes works out. Tesla isn't priced like Ford for a reason, but if Tesla pivots to start looking more like Ford; their valuation takes a huge hit. And even if that fall lands their valuation somewhere near Ford, they're in a far worse spot because Ford didn't just lose XX% of their valuation; the markets (meaning: financing) don't care where you're at, they care how you've changed (I'm picking on Tesla, but this also applies to Amazon, Google, any big tech company).

- Its extremely difficult to do layoffs (or even freeze hiring) in software orgs. Product development is already slow in most big companies; layoffs won't make it faster (or maybe they would...) The percentage of time every developer spends with ongoing maintenance increases with every employee a company hires. Every engineer at a Big Co has experienced the classic "what service handles that, ok this one, wheres it running, huh that's weird but ok, who owns it, jesus of course there's no codeowners, shit this is actually critical to X Y Z, oh its got partial ownership between this team in Asia and this team in the UK..." now imagine that dysfunction, but through the lens of layoffs.

- Any layoffs are expected to trigger a cascade effect of secondary departures. Even if a company can lay-off the right people, non-critical, newbies, etc, to keep the core business going; many people who survived are now submitting resumes elsewhere, hiring is slowed because, uh, layoffs just happened, and your company now has a red mark in every potential applicant's hitlist. There are extremely few companies, let alone tech companies, that have done double-digit-percent layoffs then came out the other end stronger. I only say this to say that: companies don't just lay off people for no reason, and very few big tech companies have financial reason to do layoffs right now (except maybe Meta).

- There's billions in capital waiting to invest in ventures that can eat some of Big Tech's lunch. If you're the head of Google, this is what's scaring you right now. Its not just the economic slowdown. Its not just the seven figure salaries you've been paying people. Its that, despite or because of all that, you may have to do layoffs, or at least cool hiring, and you have to do that while swimming surrounded by sharks who want nothing more than to give those people you laid off a few million dollars to attack a problem you trained them to be a worldwide expert in.

- And even in that environment; those huge salaries Big Tech has been paying have led to actual financial freedom for a ton of people in the software industry. Combine that with smart real estate investments or passive income and there's a significant tranche of software engineers who are biting at the bit for a bull market to come around; then retire; or maybe try an independent business (for many I've talked to, as unrelated to software as humanly possible). This trend is NOT insignificant, will become more apparent throughout 2023, and will further pressure the already hot engineering job market.

I only wall of text this to support the position that I really think this industry is fine, and growing. Software is complex. Business is complex. There are basically zero signals, right now, which communicate to me that the engineering job market won't grow over the next decade.

[1] https://www.wsj.com/articles/venture-capitals-cash-stockpile...

[2] https://finance.yahoo.com/news/venture-capital-is-seeing-a-s...