The vibes around the present AI boom aren’t great, even within the tech industry, in response to a lengthy social media post from Menlo Ventures partner Deedy Das.
Das described San Francisco as “pretty frenetic at once,” as “the divide in outcomes is the worst I’ve ever seen.”
Using a “back of the envelope AI calculation,” he projected that there are around 10,000 people — founders and employees at corporations like OpenAI, Anthropic, and Nvidia — which have “hit retirement wealth of well above $20M,” while everyone else worries “they’ll work their well-paying (but <$500k) job for his or her whole life and never get there.”
Plus, “layoffs are in full swing,” and “many software engineers feel that their life’s skill is not any longer useful,” resulting in confusion about one of the best profession paths and “a deep malaise about work (and its future),” Das said.
This prompted some eye-rolling on X, with entrepreneur Deva Hazarika arguing that “the general public on this post” are “incredibly fortunate and might simply make a alternative to be pleased.”
One other user suggested it’s “pretty rattling novel & also kinda nasty” that in the present cycle, “the identical technology is each the lottery ticket & the thing eating your fallback.”