It's the end of the (tech) world as we know it. And I feel fine.
By now, you've probably heard several of the dozens of reasons why this is the closing chapter of tech's 50-year reign over the business world. It's the end of capitalism, or the welcoming of our new AI overlords, or the rise of the trade economy, to call out just a few.
None of those seem fun. But that's OK. Because none of those are accurate.
Look, we're not facing the end of the tech era. This is all cyclical. Always has been.
But what if it wasn't? What if the digital sky really was falling this time?
OK then. Let's humor the doomers and the Boomers. Based on my 30 years building tech, half of that slinging AI, and five recent years writing about all of it without much concern for ramifications or retaliation, I'll tell you what the total collapse of the tech industry would look like and how you should prepare for it.
The Tech Giants Win
The first thing to happen is that the megacaps would finally crush all competition, and tech becomes a commodity like oil, controlled by an elite few. This is where the term "oligarchs," — which I've never been on board with as a label for corporate tech leadership — starts to be a real thing.
I spent the last few weeks of 2025 documenting how the crack in the tectonic plates caused by AI was finally doing what massive world-altering tech changes always do. Namely, the techies who were pushed out or otherwise turned off by the rise to AI ubiquity were now starting to form clusters amongst themselves and play their own game by their own rules.
This is not revolution, it's capitulation, but in a good way. Rather than fighting to stay relevant in World A — a slice of the tech industry dominated by shortsighted growth, OKRs over innovation, and productivity as a metric based on butts-in-seats and number of features released — these folks are using these AI advancements as tools to wield tech as a solution to problems in overlooked sectors filled with hungry-for-results customers.
The tech giants would literally have to take them out, one by one, like an infinite game of Whack-a-Mole. But let's say they do that, carve out lanes that only they control, usurp the public internet and collude to control all the data and the banks and the devices and the code.
That would do it. Now we'd all line up to be numbered cogs in a tightly controlled machine. The good news is we all get jumpsuits. I like jumpsuits.
Innovation gets sidelined for consistent steady profitability
The next big move, once the megacaps have total control of all the channels, is that they stop offering access at lower levels and only produce high-end-user functionality. No one gets access to the AI models or the code bases or the device schematics, instead we get the most binary and guardrailed last-mile apps.
What ultimately gets released to the public is determined by a broken but self-sustaining customer-feedback loop that resembles something like "which gruel do you like best?" while continuing to pump out new flavors of gruel. But, you know, in an app sense.
Every time you open one of these apps on your Approved AI Device (™), it's functionality and UX and UI completely changes — maybe it does something completely different altogether, because what the customer was saying yesterday is completely different than what the customer is saying today, according to unchecked predictive analysis on siloed data that only serves to sell more product.
Also, the pricing model changes every day too, because we should all be willing to pay more for the new thing.
Technologists Become Superusers
As we technologists ruminate on positioning ourselves in the new normal, making a 180-degree career change into the trades isn't the answer. Look, I grew up a blue-collar kid, and every time I hear this advice I hate it more. Quick list:
- There is already an existing army of tradespeople out there who love that trade more and have done it better for longer. Telling tech people to hop on their train with no experience or passion is insulting to every single one of those tradespeople.
- Once we get an influx of Johnny-and-Jane-Come-Lately's into roles they were never built for (which is, like, 90 percent of the reason they didn't embark on a trade in the first place), the results in trades will start to suck just as much as the results in tech suck today.
- The dumb money will move in quickly. In fact, it's already happening. We're killing cars with processors and touchscreens, we're destroying refrigerators by making them "smart," and I'm sure there's a toilet out there that wants to have a conversation with me.
No. Instead what will happen is "prompt engineering" gets taken to a new level, with 10,000 hours being the goal and certifications and classes and maintenance seminars popping up like they did for project management, Scrum, and SEO. And as soon as these "new techies" reach "black belt" status, a feature in an app will be released that does it better and for free.
Products, Services, and Customers All Lose
Eventually, enshitification becomes not a cautionary tale, but a mandate. The industry will continue to pump out products nobody wants, but somehow we all have to have. Services, executed by disinterested "thought leaders," will be the last humans in the loop, and exist as a very expensive workaround for a bloated and useless automation-only system that only a few can afford.
There will be certified concierges and coaches to help customers find their place in line, apps that help customers cope when their apps don't work like they're supposed to, and everyone gets their very own Personal Customer Number (™) that will be their primary ID to access… well, everything.
Oh, and at some point in all this we humans revolt and AI drops a bunch of nukes on us.
Aren't We Already Halfway There?
The thing about all of these tech industry collapse projections is that, in some sense, it feels like we're already heading that way. Right?
Take away the jumpsuits, approved devices, prompt engineering black belts, and Personal Customer Numbers, and gosh, all that could just be another Tuesday in Tech.
Here's the thing. Dystopia is always there for anyone to wrap into a shit sandwich to serve to anyone else who feels like throwing their hands up on a particularly bad day.
Tech has felt like this to me for almost 30 years, since I got my first fancy job at a prestigious consulting firm and hated every day of my life for the next 13 months until I figured out my escape plan.
I didn't know what a startup was, but that's where I landed. And I'm not saying every techie needs to start their own company, but the spirit of independence, the freedom, and the access that we entrepreneurs ride-or-die with has been the lure of technology since my generation first heard the dial-up modem sound decades ago.
It sounded like freedom.
Long before the AIs drop warheads on us or we blot out the sun, those rebels with the entrepreneurial spirit will realize that this isn't the end of tech, it's the dinosaurs setting themselves up for failure, not via revolt, but via indifference. And the truth is you can't stop innovation, you can't halt progress, and you can never truly box in an independent spirit.
50 years ago, this is how those dinosaurs got made and keep getting made today, the ramifications of retaliation against the dinosaurs of their day. So go ahead and think through these doom-and-gloom scenarios, their eventual inevitable conclusions, and where it feels like we're living them out today.
Then ask yourself: "What would make it better?"
And go position yourself to be able to do that.
This is a good time to join my email list, a growing rebel alliance of all kinds of professionals who want a different (and honest) perspective on tech and business.