This is a great essay. The same thing happened to pretty much all non tech fields after 2008. Ironically the “learn 2 code” era and the focus on stem/engineering were the proposed fixes at that time for young people. I was one of them.

Startup grind culture also came out of the 2008 collapse and the horrible job market for young people that extended into around 2012 and only very slowly got better until around 2015/16.

Sadly there is little choice but to either involute in the dying industry or try to find the next big thing, but many people’s careers and lives were and are eviscerated due basically to chance.