Predictions from 2021
This is a personal note I wrote to myself in 2021. The idea was to eventually write an article about it. It seems I wasn't that far off. Here's the the original except with typos, poor grammar, and everything in between.
March 2021
This is a reference for my future self to reflect how accurate I was in my predictions. It also acts as a good intellectual exercise that forces one to think a lot bigger and a lot further than what we're used to in a day to day setting.
Below I try to understand what would happen in the next 4 years and what happens in the next 10 years. The reason I chose these two time frames is because 4 years is seems to repeat a lot in our academic life (high school, grade school college, etc) and 10 years represents a generation. There's probably more logical timeframes but these are the first ones that came to mind.
Additional caveats. These ideas are not fully from me. All my ideas, like yours, are a combination of all the information we gather from our networks.
My thesis for the future is that everyone will be able to build anything they want without a large investments. Our abilty to create applications without code will become commonplace. The biggest winners will be the companies that produce the tools that allow for this (infrastructure, building, and scaling). The most needed commodity will be something between a strong UI designer and strong Product Manager. Engineering will remain extremely critical in new world but the typical developer role will disappear in be replaced with a principle developer. The characteristics that will continue to matter: Being relentless resourceful, Analystical Inutition, and pure grit will be the most important qualities because they're market and generation agnostic.
This also means that companies will hire less people to do more things. Jobs that are nice-to-have will disappear. Roles in companies all become "manager" type roles will have clear responsiblity. Performance is defined by impact created. Creative problem solving becomes more valuable than ever because solutions will cost less to create which only leaves defining the problem correctly.