Is the AI Bubble Starting to Pop?

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Mikhail: Is the AI bubble finally starting to deflate? Like, are we seeing the first signs of contraction of AI and all that? That's what I wanna talk about today. Uh, if you're watching us, I have a page, uh, up on Screen Share about talking about ChatGPT pro tiers. If you haven't been following, or I think a couple weeks ago now, they've announced that they're essentially changing how the plan structure works. So before, on the 20- on the 20X $200 plan... Or t- on the $200 plan for ChatGPT Codex, you were getting 20 times the usage, um, of the standard pro plan, they are changing that now. It's going down to 10 times. So they're literally halving the amount of usage the same amount of money. That's where the baseline of this episode is from.

Like, I think Matt, Matt, you and I talked about this before, where, like, we're gonna s- start seeing the signs at some point [00:01:00] of these companies not being able to subsidize the usage that they were subsidizing before, and maybe those were the f- gonna be the first signs of an AI bubble popping. And it looks like, from a major company, we are seeing that start to happen. Right, so that's... Again, we're gonna talk about the evidence for contraction. There's gonna be some evidence against it, too, if you wanna, uh, if you're gonna stay tuned till the end of it. But we wanna have a good discussion, heated debate, Matt and I, the AI bubble, because AI is kind of all over the place.

Like, it's really difficult to put your thumb on, because at, at one point, it's like, "Oh my God, we're getting the best models ever." And then on the other point, it's like, "This is starting to cost a ridiculous amount of money." We're, like, n- no one wants data centers and we're sending, like, satellites to space with data centers, like, with, uh, with TPUs in them.

Like, what is going on? Where are we in this, in this span? So I don't know, Matt, you wanna... D- do you have anything to chime in on before I dive

Matt: I, I do.

Mikhail: some more [00:02:00] details here? Yeah.

Matt: this goes outside of the, outside of the scope of ChatGPT pro tiers. This actually goes to something that happened to me personally last night. I got an, I got an email there. So I have a Microsoft 365 Family plan, and I got an email that was like, "Hey, we're gonna make your OneDrive space easier than ever."

So I had previously five user accounts, like, so I was able to have five users on my Microsoft 365 Family plan, and each user could have one terabyte of OneDrive space, which is effectively five terabytes, right? One to one. Now they're saying, "Oh, to make it easier, we're gonna dynamically allocate OneDrive space," and the total, total amount for the entire account is two terabytes.

Mikhail: Hmm.

Matt: taken away three terabytes, and I've seen a story that said that, uh, it's taken away four terabytes. Now, full disclosure, I'm on some weird grandfathered-in plan. I had Microsoft 365 really, really early, so I didn't actually have Family originally. I... They just kept kind of like grandfathering me in and, like, [00:03:00] kept offering me deals and stuff, and so I eventually have this sort of, like, Frankenstein sort of, like, Family plan.

'Cause I've even noticed, like, hey, I'm actually a few dollars cheaper than the one that's on record and stuff, so I'm in this sort of, like, weird grandfathered-in state. So some people apparently lost four terabytes. I lost three terabytes, and now I don't have all that filled, but I've been noticing that my digital footprint is growing.

This isn't about my digital footprint, but the point is, is that SSDs, RAM, computer components in general are going up. And even for these companies, like, think about the scale there, where if they're offering plans for whatever it is to add on to a OneDrive plan, like, you know, should we give that to people who are just gonna buy, uh, you know, buy that plan?

Or, like, buy the storage? Or should we, you know, add that to our AI? You know, where's the profit margins lie? Uh, where does the benefits lie? Not even profit margins. You know, do we think that giving our AI more compute, more storage, and more speed and, and, and more money, 'cause it could just be coming from the budget.

It doesn't have to [00:04:00] be... It's not like Microsoft has to buy a certain quota of drives. It could absolutely just be, "Hey, we don't wanna spend more money on drives right now." Whatever the reason is, like, we're losing out on that. So think about it from the consumer perspective here, where we're losing out on this ChatGPT side.

We're losing out on the, the pricing of things. If you, if you go to buy a computer, you're lo- losing out on the pricing of things. Um, I don't really follow gaming GPUs and computers unless I go to actually buy them. I just upgrade my knowledge as I need. But from what I've been told, like, there's been barely any innovation in that area because, like, all the innovation...

So, like, we're... Like, that's being kind of, quote unquote, "stolen" from us. Not that it's necessarily we're entitled to it, but the point is, the status quo of let's keep making, you know, these GPUs better and better and better, it's like that- productivity or that, uh, you know, that, that goal is, is, you know, some of that time is being stolen away by these AI data centers and these AI ambitions, and like storage is being affected.

You know, I have a friend who [00:05:00] does run a Plex server, and he said like, "It's a huge problem." 'Cause he said like, "I, I'm running out of space, and if I go to like upgrade space, like it's huge." And what's really bad is I've talked to another friend and I was saying that if this continues, and it might, then the future is that we won't locally compute anything.

We will have to rent VMs or, uh, rent our game consoles effectively through things like, which were already available, like Xbox Game Streaming, Amazon Luna, things like that, rent a VM in the, in the, uh, in the cloud.

Mikhail: even

Matt: And

Mikhail: though. Like

Matt: so that's exactly what I was gonna say. That was my thought, and then literally a week later, Microsoft announced, "Oh, we're limiting the time in which you can game stream."

Mikhail: Yeah

Matt: And it's like, okay, well now there's a hole in that, and it's not a little bit of a limit. It's not like, hey, you're pay... you're playing 500 hours a, you know, a month, we gotta cool this. It's five hours. Like, I'm paying for the top-of-the-line plan. It was unlimited, and now it's down to five hours. If it was down to 100 hours, it would be like, okay, maybe that's a little bit nor- more normal, but down to five hours.

So we're getting hit everywhere and, and, and we have to think about this extrapolating. Like, as computers get more expensive, then businesses are gonna have to, like if they're buying point of sale terminals, those point of sale terminals are more money. And I could talk about this forever, right? There's so many like places where this can ripple out.

And so now we're, now we're [00:06:00] entering in an era where I think... Like, I'm gonna say this, I don't know if the AI bubble is popping. I have no idea. I don't know if that's really predictable, and it certainly is not predictable within my skill set. But I do think that companies pulling back in areas where they're spending a bunch of money, especially when that money is subsidized by angel investors, them pulling back and passing the cost on to consumers is an inevitability, and we're starting to see that.

Could this be an AI bubble pop? Maybe. That's beyond my area of expertise. But I would say that this type of behavior, as long as the, as the, the stat- the status quo now is dump money into AI. If this, if, if that remains to be the status quo moving on into the future, then we can see cuts like this happening over and over and over again.

Not necessarily just like ChatGPT. I'm talking in general. Taking away OneDrive space, prices going up [00:07:00] a- above normal levels of inflation. The list goes on, right? Usage going up in, in price, right? Those type of things, I think we can cont- I, I would estimate that we'll continue to see that

Mikhail: I, yes, I, I have no doubt in my mind that we will continue to see these consumerized of tech, right? Like, the, the stuff like the Microsoft 365, the gaming stuff, I, I don't know if that's a sign of AI bubble popping. I almost think that that's a counter-sign because every- like be- that is happening because of every p- every single dollar, every single cent is going into infrastructure. Every single every single piece of sand on Earth is being like compacted into chips to fu- to fund these massive gigacenters to, you know, answer if, uh, whatever, if you should have a donut for breakfast or whatever you ask ChatGPT for. Like, [00:08:00] that is almost a si- a counter-sign for me, and I don't see that stopping f- at least until, you know, 2029 maybe is when maybe s- something starts to balance out. but the AI bubble itself, like, the, these plans, uh, I'm showing the page, so let me, let me, let me give, let me go through them a little bit here. 'Cause not only did they lower the $200 tier, which was already a lot of money, by the way. Like, I remember what Matt, Matt, when you and I talked about this early on, we're like they started offering these $200 plans, we're like $200 subscriptions is like a ridiculous amount of money for a consumer. we di- we never had $200 subscriptions before. Like those are, those were not a thing until AI came, came into space, and then all of a sudden they were completely normalized to the point where there's some people out there, some prosumers obviously, that are having like five of these $200 subscriptions and they're asking for more. So they've put out a $500 subscription now. That's-- This is-- OpenAI is the first one to do this. That [00:09:00] gives you a little bit more usage than the old $200 subscription, but only by a little bit. It's 25X the usage versus 20X of what before, was before. So there's now a- another tier made by one of these top-tier AI providers that f- 100% we know Anthropic is gonna do the same thing because they, if they see $500 selling, they're gonna be like, "Oh, then we're gonna put a $500 tier on ourselves." When does it end? I don't know. I think it, it's, it's a really difficult one where, like, they're lowering the usage. How much can they continue to lower it until people will stop paying

Matt: Well, I think that we also have to take a look, this is a multifaceted question. There is a ChatGPT free. People are still using ChatGPT for free. I have a friend who i- who is using AI for free, and the only reason why they have any premium tier of AI is because they had a Microsoft 365 subscription prior to Copilot being added into it.

And then some, like, premium Copilot access was added in, and that's what he uses. So we [00:10:00] have that. There's also another tier, I forget what it is, so there's free and there's another tier that is... I...

Mikhail: Look it

Matt: Well, there's a $20 tier, but th- what I was gonna say is ChatGPT/OpenAI has that new ads thing where they're like, say like, "Hey, like take out ads on OpenAI, and it will be served to free..."

And then there's another tier I can't remember. Free and then the other tier. There's like two tiers that will be served those ads. The reason why I mention that is because if those efforts are successful, then, you know, maybe, maybe then we won't see, you know, a, a usage go up in price above normal rates of inflation, or maybe we'll see the plans get all jumbled around where it'll go, like, you know, 100, then 150, then 450 or whatever, right?

Like we'll see a jumbling of the plans depending on how successful the ads go. Because, I mean, at the end of the day here, in the past, we've had massive, massive websites that had huge teams, offices in LA, the whole shebang, and they were primarily funded from ads and [00:11:00] people going on the website for free.

It wasn't like a newspaper where you have to pay for, you know, the subscription for the newspaper to then read the website. It was just free ads. So I mean, it's possible, depending on how these ads work, how many people take them out and all the rest of it, that this could be a way for them to solve it.

I'm not saying that ads are the best way to handle it, like it's kind of a pain, but the thing is, is that if something, if something becomes super ultra premium, generally speaking, a free tier goes away. So something like a Netflix, Netflix, there is no free tier. There's a free trial, but there is no free tier.

They got it as close as they could to free, which is the cheap Netflix with ads. That's as close as you're gonna get, at least here in Canada. There is no free Netflix. Because there's premium content on there, right? There's like copywritten premium movies and TV shows and things that take millions of dollars to make that are run by huge pr- huge production studios that have a ton of licensing deals associated with them, and there's even live events like WWE events and things like this.

And so of course, like they [00:12:00] can't charge for that. The thing with AI is it hasn't reached that level of premium yet. Now, some would argue that this is a, a salesmanship tactic, which it, it is, which is, "Hey, let's get the person onto AI 'cause AI is brand new. Get them to use the free tier. They'll keep using it and using it and using it, and then they'll hit a usage wall, and then they'll be offered maybe a reset or an upgrade or both.

And then someone might try the $20 a month plan, $25 a month plan, and then they get hooked Maybe that's the way we... You know, that, that there absolutely is merit to that level, like that salesmanship, uh, tactic. But the thing is, is what's the return on investment here? Because we know that angel investors, like these big-time investors, have been subsidizing this, the whole thing.

However... Uh, this whole... the whole time. However, that's how you, I guess, you spin up quickly. I mean, if you, if this was, if AI, all the AI companies, let's just say OpenAI and Anthropic, I know there's more, but let's just say those two were completely funded on, uh, not for, not on investor dollars, but [00:13:00] completely funded on responsible business growth and maintaining a, a good level of profitability, what ChatGPT would be, we'd be, would we be on?

Would we be on GPT-3? Maybe. We wouldn't be on Six Astra. Like the path would be much different

Mikhail: 100%. And I lean towards this not being the sign of a bubble pop as well, by the way. Like, I, I think that kind of on the same lines as what you're saying, where, like, people-- Like, there are still free tiers. There's a lot of people using the free tiers. There's not a lot of people that have converted. Uh, I just pulled up an article here. As of June 4th, 2026, about 3% of US howho- US households pay for AI, 3%, which means from an investor point of view, the opportunity is still very, very big, right? If you, if you can convert 3 to 6%, you're doubling amount of income coming out. If you can convert it to 10%, [00:14:00] you know, uh, it extrapolates more and more. The other part that I'm, that I think investors are looking at here is that the people using the free tier aren't actually experiencing AI the way that AI is ex- like, right now. the fr- the people using the free tier are kind of using AI as a Google replacement,

Matt: It's a Google search replacement, that's right

Mikhail: Yeah, because technically the free tiers on ChatGPT, for example, I believe they offer you the cha- the, uh, the Luna model as the only model you can use, and there's a limit, limitations on how much you can use it, obviously. But it's like the lowest-end model that they have. Luna's a great model, but it's not really great for agentic work on, on the whole. And I really think that a very small amount of the population have experienced agentic work in, in a similar way to like a, a, you know, an engineer at a company with unlimited AI spend, right? So I think there's a lot of room to grow these [00:15:00] companies where they can s- like, a-as they make models cheaper, which is another key part to run, a lot of room to grow, uh, the user base to start using the more advanced functionalities of the, of those models. So again, from an investment point of view, from a long-term horizon point of view, the opportunity that people are seeing, that the investors are seeing is still kind of limitless, like we haven't seen where it gets to quite yet. So there, I, I think the appetite to continue to invest is nowhere near being done.

And like you said, until there's some sort of strain on that appetite, whether it be a recession or like the, you know, money running out potentially, like loans running out, bank loans running out, like there's some sort of catastrophe, uh, or like there's potential of like AI failing and not living up to the hype, any of those things happened, the investor's just gonna keep investing because they want a return on investment.

They want 10x, 20x, 100x 10 years from now, rather than, you know, [00:16:00] right now. So,

Matt: But everyone wants the control because it's a new frontier, right? It's like, it's like, it, how, how difficult is it gonna be to spin up a social media network now? Very difficult. Which ones have been successful? I mean, we hear about Mastodon and Blue Sky, but, like, in passing. TikTok is the only one that's really made it big time in the n- in, in the last number of years.

And then there's, like, really niche ones and, and, and but I- but when I say niche, I don't mean that they're bad. But, like, something like Whatnot is sort of like a social media, like, auction house place, right? For people to buy cards and things like that.

Mikhail: Mm-hmm

Matt: I kind of roughly consider that kind of social media-ish, right?

It's kind of like a... I don't know. People are in there betting and stuff and auctioning and things. But the thing is, is, like, back in the day, it was like how many social media networks came and went? MySpace was a pioneer, and then very, very quickly it's like here's Facebook, here's Twitter, here's Instagram, right?

Here's this, here's that, here's this. And then now Instagram and Facebook, of course, are basically married and, you know, the rest of, the rest, all, all the rest is history, right? MySpace is, you know, off to obscurity. Bandcamp is, [00:17:00] uh, still there, but, you know, it's a, uh, niche thing for bands. But the, the, the point is, is that nobody wants to be the niche in the AI space.

They wanna be, oh, you know, we're one of the two, the two top. We wanna be, you know, ChatGPT better be the number one. Anthropic, you know, Claude better be the number one. Whatever it is. Whatever it is that, that, that wants, that's gonna happen. That's what they're all fighting for right now, I would estimate anyway

Mikhail: No, I agree, I agree. I th- I think, I think that's what, that's exactly, like, the focus of these companies internally. Now, the... I'll, I'll kind of end this discussion or, like, my, my side of the discussion on one potential caveat to maybe there being a bubble, a bubble pop in the imminent future. There's a, there was a Reuters article recently that pointed out that doing analysis on the businesses that have deeply adopted AI, hasn't been really any direct correlation [00:18:00] between AI usage and financial gain an organization Right?

So people that, like c- organizations that double and go fully in AI psychosis mode and ask everyone to use AI aren't necessarily generating more income than the companies that aren't at this point in time. So if, if that continues, if the trend continues, and I could see that, by the way. I, I, I understand that, that, that hypothesis because really what's happening is the c- the employees first of all need time to ramp up to learn how to use AI, and then at the end of the day, they're using AI to do the same exact job that they were doing before for the most part, plus or minus a little, uh, things here and there.

And at the end-- Like, it's not resulting in higher financial gains, but the spend to, A, ramp the employees up by using a bunch of tokens, and then use those tokens to do the same job that they were doing before radical, radically high. So when you look at those [00:19:00] comparisons, I can see that being like a, a, a serious red flag on a company's sh- like a, like sheet, like, um, a year-end spending sheet.

And like, you know, the board looks at and they're like, "Why are we spending all this money if we're not getting any results back?" Right? So I can see if that trickles down and if that continues to happen over the next two years, and the companies just can't find the fit that makes it so that they can spend more AI and make more money, then they'll have to lower the AI spend, which would make it, m- put pressure on the, on the AI companies that are bleeding money to not be able to sign these massive contracts anymore.

And that trickle effect, that kind of overall, uh, business effect could have a very serious impact on the industry, in some form of a bubble contraction or a pop. It's speculation. Um, it's early in my opinion to, to make that claim for sure. [00:20:00] But if there's already, you know, analysis being done and definitely internal analysis that's gonna be done year-end this year, which is, you know, for some companies it's already done, some companies coming up, uh, w- we'll, we'll see the effects of it sometime next year for sure, and, uh, maybe we'll talk about it again.

But that's the only, like... That's the real, like... Because companies really are bottom line focused. lot of companies are. Now they do have a future look be- so some of these companies will be like, "Well this, this comes with like, you know, growing pains of figuring it out," and they'll be willing to burn some of that money.

Some companies won't. So we'll see

Matt: The thing that comes to mind with this i- to me is, uh, the open office, the open concept fad. Where do you remember everyone was like, "Open concept, open concept," and then this was, like, at the beginning, I think, actually o- of this show, like 2018 or something, where, like, all these articles started coming out that was like, "Hey, we're losing productivity left, right and center."

Mikhail: Угу.

Matt: like people are, people are constantly, you know, kind of yelling at each other across the cubicles. There's not even really a cubicle there anymore. They're tapping each other on the shoulder. Like, there's no privacy. [00:21:00] It's just constant like, you know, everyone's kind of interrupting everybody. Everyone is like, "Oh, I'll just reach out for this person, I'll talk to that person.

I'll go to this person, I'll go to that person." And it, it ends up being almost like it's too social. And I remember there were some companies that were very stubborn about it saying like, "No, we're sticking with it." And then there were obviously cases that came out that were like, "No, open, open concept has helped us."

And there's 1,000,001 niches out there, 1,000,001 companies, 1,000,001 company cultures. I get it. But, you know, by and large, the open office concept failed as far as I'm aware in terms of the en masse adoption and its actual usefulness, it, it, it failed. Will AI do the same thing? I don't know. But it could fail in a sector.

It could fail in several sectors, you know, to your point. Like, what if a, a big portion of OpenAI's, uh, revenue comes from the financial sector of all the, uh, CPAs or whatever, getting all of their, you know, their ChatGPT subscriptions, and then all of a sudden all the enterprise, uh, plans like, you know, they're doing the, the brass of these, you know, big financial [00:22:00] institutions look at it, look at it and they go, "We're making the same amount or less amount of money.

Why would I pay for all the... Why would I pay for all these like AI licenses? Let's cut it." If that's a significant portion at the time, and I'm just speculating now completely, uh, or hypothetic- I'm making a hypothetical. Hypothetically, if, if that was a huge portion of OpenAI's, uh, revenue, like that'll be a huge story and then you may f- and then you may see people, other people jump off too.

Someone else who is, you know, another company, maybe same sector finance or a different sector who was on the fence about keeping all those licenses might have been like, "You know what? The finance sector's gone. They had the same issues that I have. I'm out of here, too." And then you start having almost like panic

Mikhail: Mm-hmm. The snowball

Matt: A snowball effect potentially.

Hypothetical 100%, I have no idea how much of OpenAI's real revenue comes from finance. It's just an idea. It's just a, you know, a way to kind of break down the, uh, the thought in my head. But

Mikhail: Mm-hmm. We'll

Matt: [00:23:00] It's

Mikhail: thing we can see. But like, I mean, it, it was interesting to point this out because I think, again, you and I, Matt, had a discussion about like if, if they start to cut the usage, that's the first sign, right? So it, it is a sign that we should keep an eye on. I'm not sure if it is that serious, um, but it's for sure something to keep an eye on because obviously where the AI bubble is now, like it's gonna affect everything when it pops. It's, you

Matt: I'm gonna say one thing, Mike, and I, and I, and I want you just to, like, kind of comment on this. I wanna know what your thoughts are, just briefly, 'cause I know we're kind of concluding here, on what do you think about this landscape for morale for, like, our, our mor- our, our morale? So what I mean by that is we keep seeing, like, you know, oh, like, you know, AI's in trouble, AI's not in trouble, prices keep going up, tech's all messed up, whatever.

A lot of what made tech the way it is pre-AI was people being super passionate about tech. They'd make, you know, like, MacGyver little gadgets, right? Like, not [00:24:00] literally MacGyver, but they'd, like, MacGyver together components and make little gadgets and things and, and then obviously you had, like, your big, your big companies like Microsoft providing enterprise software, and there were many others, right?

Like Intuit providing, like, tax software and stuff and, and, and, and the whole shebang. And you had all these sort of, like, players, but people were just sort of selling to customers. Now it's like we've entered this weird hysteria, and because all the prices have entered into, like, you know, they're, they're, they're moonshotting a lot of these prices, you're kicking a lot of people who are passionate out.

Like, someone who's passionate about something, you know, if they're rich, fine. But if someone who's just like, "Oh, I really like tinkering with, like, those little, like, Chinese handheld gaming devices," if those have gone up two, 300 bucks, which they have in some cases, someone's just gonna be like, "The heck with it.

I'm not doing that anymore. I'm not gonna do that anymore." And then, and then, like, what, what's the... Like, that, that's, that's a morale problem. That's, like, a passion problem, and you start, you start bleeding talent. How many, how many comments read, and I don't know how many people follow this, but how many comments in these, like, kind of gloom and doom articles read, "I should [00:25:00] just learn to be a plumber.

Time to learn plumbing. Time to learn plumbing"? And it's like if you, if you, you, you know, we, we... L- let's say all tech workers are a think tank. That, that think tank has a big old leak in it, man. And if you start losing people who are passionate inside of the tech sector, inside the software sector What's gonna happen?

Like, what's gonna happen in the, in, in the future? Like, I think that that's, that's, uh, maybe that's another web news, but that is a big old question

Mikhail: I, yeah, I, I, I think we could talk about this for a long time. I, I will say, like, part of this is a natural adaption of the industry in a rapid sense because the reality is, is that there's just not going to be as big of a demand for those kinds of passions as there was before with the way AI is progressing and the job market is showing. Like, yeah, some people, some passionate people, we're gonna lose them 100%, and that's gonna hurt some of the parts of the industry. But reality is, is like if they go on and do something else that [00:26:00] they can get passionate about that's not as affected by AI, great. Like that's, you know, the industry kind of is shedding its, its talent pool right now, and it's sad and it sucks for us and like I, I hate seeing it personally. Um, but that's the reality of the situation. Like it's-- The morale is low for a lot of people. Some people are embracing it, I'll be very clear. Like some people are loving it. They're building these crazy like modded game hacks and they're just like they're literally having the time of their life and it, it's bringing people, other people in, passionate people in from that perspective, right?

Now the ethics and the legality of these mods, like game mods and stuff that I'm seeing aside, there are passionate people working on these things that are-- they're just prompting and trying to get really cool like, you know, Skate 3 and Spider-Man or whatever. Like it- there's a lot of really interesting mashups that are happening in the gaming space from these people that are passionate about using AI in those kinds of ways.

And same [00:27:00] thing with the tinker space, like they're, you know, hacking a bunch of stuff into ESPs, into, you know, microcontrollers and stuff like that because they're able to now where before it was a really high barrier to entry. It's a much lower barrier to entry. So there is a little bit of that balance. I think on the overarching part of it, like yes, I think mo- more often than not, it's much more doom and gloom because a lot of people that have enjoyed programming, programming has Not-- completely changed. I mean like n- not the same at all as it was a year and a half ago, I would say.

Like not even relatively close to the same. So yeah, like that's going to be doom and gloom on, on mass. If you liked any part of programming a year and a half ago- It's like I, I'm-- Like it, it sucks. Like I, I'm sorry. It, it really, really sucks. If you can't find the joy in prompting, uh, you know, our AI gods to create the next thing that you're building and, you know, test the next feature that you're building, gonna have a bad time. It is doom and gloom. [00:28:00] So morale-wise, yeah, it, en masse I think it's very low, and we are gonna lose and shed a lot of engineering, engineering talent, especially on the high end, like the, the really passionate older developers are going to shed because their entire industry is completely different, and they're gonna have a hard time adapting. And there's gonna be people in between as well. So I think we can save that and the rest of the discussion for another web news, um, because there's a lot to talk about on that side. yeah, like it's, from a morale perspective, it's, it's a rough one out there, and I, I definitely sympathize with people because there's a lot of engineering work that I used to really like to do that I just, I don't think I'll ever have to do again or ever will do again. Which if you look at it from that perspective, like it sucks. Um, I am trying to find the positives, and I am finding some of them, so I'm not saying I'm, I'm really doom and gloom. But I'm also in a privileged position where, you know, I make, [00:29:00] I'm still making money, I'm still, I still have a job and all that, so that's a completely different position than a lot of the people themselves in.

Matt: There is no, there is no need, want, or passion for hand-coded things the, the way that, that people have for handcrafted things. If that makes sense. Everyone used to make like chairs, for example, by hand. Now we have factory-made chairs. But people can f- people have etched out a niche in being, you know, we make, we hand-make our chairs.

This is, you know, handcrafted wood chairs Would anyone buy a handcrafted app?

Mikhail: I don't think so. Like,

Matt: I don't think so either

Mikhail: I really think that that's a crazy thought that people-- I have seen people say,

Matt: I don't think it's crazy, but I, I don't think it's gonna work out

Mikhail: Yeah, you can't touch, like, an app. No one cares about... Like, that's the other thing is I, this goes down the rabbit hole, but no one cares about us. The general public is [00:30:00] rejoicing in the fact that these, the tech workers are getting laid off.

Let me be very clear in that. Because

Matt: They're, they're rejoicing

Mikhail: they're rejoicing. Yes, they're abs-- I've seen this all over the place. They're like all these bastards that sat at home in their offices and did shit all work that were getting paid $300,000 finally are getting, like, the, the treatment that they deserve.

That's the sentiment that's

Matt: Well, it's crabs in a bucket

Mikhail: Sure. Exactly. like, that's what, that's what a lot of people are saying about this situation, and it, it's going to happen to them. That's the crazy thing is, like, it's going to happen to them. It's a slow boil. But, like, they're seeing it as like, "Hell yeah, screw these tech workers."

So, like, people coming to us and being like, "Oh, I want these handcrafted a-" No, they don't give a crap. Like, the regular p- people don't give a crap. Like, they

Matt: Right

Mikhail: want us to fail

Matt: I haven't seen that yet, but like I, it's interesting 'cause I, I, I'm just not in those circles or whatever. I'm not denying you. I don't really hang out in

Mikhail: Like

Matt: [00:31:00] Interesting. I am actually working on a blog post about this, if funny enough. I'm working on, like, a, a take on the, you know, the artisan or, like, would anyone care about the, the handcrafted app? So if that's out... Well, I guess it won't be out by the time this web news comes out, but it'll be out on htmlallthethings.com at some point if you're, uh, interested to give it a read.

Just a, just a bit of a take, a bit of a, bit of an editorial take on the times. Um, and that wasn't, that, that wasn't meant to be an ad, it's just... That's why I brought it up in this episode, it's just, like, something literally on my mind, so. But I think that's it. That's the web news. What did you think of this week's web news?

Let us know in the comments section. Give us a follow or a subscribe. And that's it. See you guys later

Mikhail: Bye