I hear you, and it’s great your shop is booming. That firsthand experience is real. But I think you’re underestimating the impact of a full-scale economic crash like the one we saw during dotCom bust. It’s not just the companies that were part of the bubble that are affected at that point.
You’re right, AWS is the backbone of the internet. But in a major recession, what happens to the businesses that pay AWS’s bills? When VC funding evaporates and thousands of AI startups go under overnight, that’s a huge chunk of demand gone. When established companies like retailers, streamers, and car manufacturers see their sales plummet, their first move is to slash costs. And one of the easiest non-essential costs to cut is their massive cloud computing bill. They’ll scale down servers, delay migrations, and halt new projects.
It wasn’t just Pets.com that went under when the bubble burst. The demand was crushed for everything from Cisco’s routers to enterprise software and office furniture. The companies that built the backbone got hammered because their customers, both the dotComs and the traditional businesses, stopped spending.
So when Amazon sees a massive drop in demand from its customers, you better believe their “projected orders to 2035” will get a brutal, immediate review. The frantic calls from your bosses won’t be about how to handle all the overtime at that point. They’ll be from your sales guys trying to figure out why Amazon just deferred half their 2026 orders and put the 2027 ones on indefinite hold.
That heavy industry work you mentioned might be what keeps the lights on. But the idea that the data center gold rush is immune to a system wide credit crunch is exactly the kind of thinking that sets people up for the hardest fall. I’d be cautious about banking on that overtime lasting.
Yeah I’ve ridden out economic highs and lows. This past year, data center orders were an all-time high and everything else was very low. Next year both are record highs. I’m not sure if you got the impression that I think AI is this awesome economic boom or that I even like it. I think it’s all a bunch of hot air that probably is going blow up in everyone’s face and that sucks, but the world will still keep moving. Even during 2008 or covid or the dotcom bust, there was still people working, myself included. Absolute worst case scenario, I lose my job and can’t find another (unlikely considering how much experience I have in industrial), I can always just go wire houses with my buddy. I’ve done that for years on the side.
Like I was pretty much just commenting on the news, pleased to see it might turn into more manufacturing for the company I work for, while most of the comments on here missed the point entirely and thinks that it’s saying “AI should be called manufacturing” and not that some of the biggest buildings in the country are going to require infrastructure manufactured in the states to build them.
I know this type of talk isn’t about “me” and moreso what will happen to the economy and working people as a whole, but that will primarily affect things like the tech industry, which goes through this boom or bust cycle anyway. I don’t see the AI bubble popping as everyone suddenly losing their jobs.
Of course the world will keep moving, my point is that post crash economy is going to be painful to live in. Eventually it’ll even out or maybe the US will go the way of USSR and something new will be built in its place. The reason AI bubble popping will be particularly painful though is because so much of the economy is tied into it now. It’s far worse than dotCom era.
I hear you, and it’s great your shop is booming. That firsthand experience is real. But I think you’re underestimating the impact of a full-scale economic crash like the one we saw during dotCom bust. It’s not just the companies that were part of the bubble that are affected at that point.
You’re right, AWS is the backbone of the internet. But in a major recession, what happens to the businesses that pay AWS’s bills? When VC funding evaporates and thousands of AI startups go under overnight, that’s a huge chunk of demand gone. When established companies like retailers, streamers, and car manufacturers see their sales plummet, their first move is to slash costs. And one of the easiest non-essential costs to cut is their massive cloud computing bill. They’ll scale down servers, delay migrations, and halt new projects.
It wasn’t just Pets.com that went under when the bubble burst. The demand was crushed for everything from Cisco’s routers to enterprise software and office furniture. The companies that built the backbone got hammered because their customers, both the dotComs and the traditional businesses, stopped spending.
So when Amazon sees a massive drop in demand from its customers, you better believe their “projected orders to 2035” will get a brutal, immediate review. The frantic calls from your bosses won’t be about how to handle all the overtime at that point. They’ll be from your sales guys trying to figure out why Amazon just deferred half their 2026 orders and put the 2027 ones on indefinite hold.
That heavy industry work you mentioned might be what keeps the lights on. But the idea that the data center gold rush is immune to a system wide credit crunch is exactly the kind of thinking that sets people up for the hardest fall. I’d be cautious about banking on that overtime lasting.
Yeah I’ve ridden out economic highs and lows. This past year, data center orders were an all-time high and everything else was very low. Next year both are record highs. I’m not sure if you got the impression that I think AI is this awesome economic boom or that I even like it. I think it’s all a bunch of hot air that probably is going blow up in everyone’s face and that sucks, but the world will still keep moving. Even during 2008 or covid or the dotcom bust, there was still people working, myself included. Absolute worst case scenario, I lose my job and can’t find another (unlikely considering how much experience I have in industrial), I can always just go wire houses with my buddy. I’ve done that for years on the side.
Like I was pretty much just commenting on the news, pleased to see it might turn into more manufacturing for the company I work for, while most of the comments on here missed the point entirely and thinks that it’s saying “AI should be called manufacturing” and not that some of the biggest buildings in the country are going to require infrastructure manufactured in the states to build them.
I know this type of talk isn’t about “me” and moreso what will happen to the economy and working people as a whole, but that will primarily affect things like the tech industry, which goes through this boom or bust cycle anyway. I don’t see the AI bubble popping as everyone suddenly losing their jobs.
Of course the world will keep moving, my point is that post crash economy is going to be painful to live in. Eventually it’ll even out or maybe the US will go the way of USSR and something new will be built in its place. The reason AI bubble popping will be particularly painful though is because so much of the economy is tied into it now. It’s far worse than dotCom era.