Somebody reached out to me 5 years ago to tell me that a small gesture in high school made a big difference in their life.

We’re both into our 30s now, and I never knew her very well, and hadn’t even seen (or talked to) her since I’d graduated. But I did remember the gesture - and even these 5 years later it still makes me happy to remember her thanking me! Like, it didn’t feel like I was doing anything much at all at the time, and I probably would’ve never even thought about it again.

It is complex - is it better for the money to go back into the economy by paying high salaries to a specific group of highly-educated people? Or is it better for the money to go back into the economy through taxes, then disbursing the benefits to lower-income benefit programs?

I’m not sure what the answer is. The former is likely to drive some innovation, which I’m sure varies by company. Where the latter could also unlock innovation by giving the bottom-quartile of earners a chance to improve their situation.

Don’t forget the other stakeholder - the general public.

Yes it sucks for developers, but does it make any difference for any other employee? Why does Joe’s plumbing have to pay those taxes, but Jane’s AdTech company doesn’t?

Sure, there are benefits to investing in R&D in general, and tech has fueled a lot of growth, so incentivizing it has likely paid off for the whole economy. But will that forever be true? Maybe?

It’s really interesting to hear your points.

I do think I may struggle a bit to find something comparable to my current company, but we’re also hiring right now. And it’s a very small company in the grand scheme of things, even though we have customers much bigger.

I guess having that experience makes me think that there must be a lot of other small companies working in their own interesting niche, providing a valuable product for a subset of major companies. You just don’t usually know they exist unless you need their specific niche.

But I recognize your points too. It seems like the B-to-C space is really tricky right now, and likely fits closer with what you’re describing.

I think that the flip side is that a company doesn’t need to make it big to be successful. If you can hire 5 developers and bring in $2m/yr, there’s nothing at all wrong with that as a business. Maybe we will get lucky and the market will trend towards more of those to fill in the void that you mentioned. I think it could lead to a lot of innovation and a really healthy tech world! But maybe it’s just being overly optimistic to think that might be the path forward :)

I feel like one of us must be in a bit of our own bubble.

The company that I work for is currently innovating very fast (not LLM related), creating so much value for other companies that they have never gotten from any other business.. I know this because when they switch to our company, they tell us how much better our software product is compared to anything they've ever used. It has tons of features that no other company has. That's all I can say without doxxing too much.

I feel like it's unimaginative to say:

> What more tech is there to sell besides LLM integrations?

I have like 7 startup ideas written down in my notes app for software products that I wish I had in my life, but don't have time to work on, and can't find anything that exists for it. There is so much left to create