Ask HN: Are we in the midst of a systems collapse?

TL;DR - Boomers ruin everything.

Hello HN!

While I earnestly desire my question be nothing more than hyperbolic ramblings of a crusty old IT guy, the antidotal conversations I've had with many of my professional contacts (most working in IT, but not all) seems to be reinforcing this drearily pessimistic observation:

Over the last several years a substantial amount of highly specialized, process critical employees have either retired early or quit abruptly across many sectors in the economy. These positions carried immense tribal knowledge that ignorant/incompetent/inexperienced management failed to adequately prepare any succession plan for, leaving entire system processes void of the knowledge and skills to necessary to perform.

These events appear to be leading society towards a sort of "critical mass of burnout" where remaining employees are being forced to saddle the responsibilities of the previous coworker but lack the experience/knowledge necessary to either perform the job efficiently, or at all. The vast majority of these people are have added duties, and the stressors that accompany them, saddled on them without the commensurate increase in compensation.

Thoughts?

I know a person who is an advocate for nuclear energy, who sincerely believes that it is "the power to save the world". He was an officer in the nuclear navy and spent some time working in procurement of naval reactors.

When he retired from the navy he got a job working on small reactors (a subject that he's been passionate about) at a vendor that supplies naval reactors.

The "revolving door" can have the appearance of impropriety but sometimes it's the only way you're going to get people with certain knowledge and talent. For instance anything having to do with naval nuclear power requires a special security clearance on top of an ordinary security clearance. The person who is most likely to have that security clearance (as well as knowledge about naval nuclear reactors) is a person who serves as a "nuke" in the navy. So that kind of person is naturally going to wind up working at that kind of vendor not necessarily because of corruption but because of the scarcity of talent.

There's no thought put into long-term stability or serviceability of software. I fully understand the business need to "ship now", but if the software isn't performing its basic needs, what are you even shipping?