How can this be? Here we are, right before Christmas, and it will be a new year before we know it. Time to put 2023 in our rearview mirrors. I, for one, say, good riddance. I’m sorry, but 2023 will not go down as a great year for me, and I think it was a tough year for many of our friends in the tech world, too. In fact, to quote Queen Elizabeth (who we lost in 2022), for me, 2023 was in many ways an annus horribilis.

I say that because 2023 saw the sometimes-savage impact of the cycles of the market up close. For the first time in a long time, many of our friends and colleagues were the victims of layoffs. In fact, according to Crunchbase, over 191,000 U.S.-based tech workers were the victims of layoffs. That doesn’t include non-U.S.-based workers, which could easily drive that number to over a quarter of a million. That is on the heels of 2022, when about half that number of workers were laid off. So, in the last two years we have seen 350,000 or so tech workers laid off. For many of these folks, finding their next gig was not as easy as it was in the past. There weren’t recruiters breaking down their doors with interview opportunities. Employers became more selective and demanding. If you are looking for a job that is 100% remote so you can work from wherever, that gets much harder. Employers want employees in the office again. Probably every one of you reading this was either laid off at some point in the last two years or you know someone who was. But it wasn’t just the layoffs. The very foundation of our tech infrastructure suffered seismic shocks, too.

For many of us, the Silicon Valley Bank failure in March was a splash of cold water in the face that signaled business as usual was no longer going to be business as usual. I have been in tech for 30+ years, and for much of that time, SVB was a mainstay of venture-backed startups. Most of the venture-backed companies I helped found were customers. If they could fail, who and what else was suspect? We soon found out what else was not as rock solid as we had led ourselves to believe. The entire VC ecosystem that the tech world relied upon was shaken to its core. With the unprecedented rapid rise in interest rates by the Fed, the underlying business fundamentals of the tech VC market were broken. Who would take a risk investing in non-profitable startups when you could get tax-free bonds that paid as much, guaranteed? We actually saw VC funds close up shop, not raise new funds and cut back. This resulted in over 3,200 venture-backed companies failing in 2023. For those companies who held on, many received the message from their boards that they shouldn’t expect to raise more money at “up valuations” until sometime in 2024 or beyond. They should hold on to their cash. It seems reasonable, but you know, with VCs, there are always two sides (or more) to the coin.

These companies are usually not profitable. They burn money every month. When they cut, they do so first with marketing and sales, and generally, their growth slows. Slow growth makes it difficult to raise funds at an increased valuation. So, it becomes a death spiral. They aren’t growing enough to raise money at a decent valuation, but they are being told to shut down the marketing spend. It’s a Catch-22.

In addition to all the macroeconomic news, 2023 was also a year where war seemed to be breaking out everywhere.  I am reminded of the old saying, “War is not healthy for children and other living things.” It isn’t great for tech either, as it turns out. Especially when those war zones are also in places that support thriving tech economies.

So, besides macroeconomic slumps and wars, what else can we say about 2023? In terms of DevOps, we saw a year where DevOps seemed to move from front-and-center to blending in. I think most organizations today are using some sort of CI/CD process in terms of developing and deploying software. Many of the fundamentals of DevOps have seeped into the very fabric of our IT infrastructure. Some may see this as “the death of DevOps;” heck, even Gene Kim is renaming DOES into something else. But as I will explain in my next article, the rumors of DevOps’ demise have been greatly exaggerated. To the contrary, DevOps is beginning to see its promise fulfilled. You will have to read my next blog to get more of my views on this topic.

But 2023 (like all black clouds) also had a silver lining. As Dustin Hoffman in The Graduate said (sort of), I have two words for you: AI. With all due respect to Taylor Swift, my Person of the Year was not really a person at all. I would say it’s AI. You could not swing a golf club around tech people in 2023 without hitting AI in the head. AI has the potential to be a civilization-changing technology. On par with the internet itself, the cellphone and the like, AI could change the lives of everyone. This is as opposed to technologies like the cloud or methodologies like DevOps that were technology-market-changing. AI is attracting literally billions of dollars in investments and is moving forward at warp speed, in spite of those who say it should slow down. It promises to invade and disrupt every corner of IT as well as one business vertical after the next. A perusal of our Techstrong.ai site will give you all you need to know. The impact of AI on DevOps is just starting to be understood. Operationalizing AI for IT will be a major theme for us here at Techstrong in the year ahead, so stay tuned.

While 2023 has been a difficult year in tech, the great thing about cycles is they cycle through. What went down will come up. We are already starting to see signs of an uptick. I am personally optimistic that 2024 will be a great year for the tech world and I pray for the world in general with fewer wars, less death and less sickness. How about more peace, more commerce, more goodwill, better health and, of course, more DevOps?

Happy holidays and happy new year to all of our Techstrong community!