September 1st marks 16 years since I graduated from University of Illinois with my BS in Mathematics & Computer Science, and I entered the software industry officially. A lot has changed since then, from how we develop software to how we manage software projects, to how software companies are established. So much has changed so quickly in the last 16 years that it prompted me to start looking back to where the industry was at the time I started, in an effort to understand the evolution and more importantly figure out if some modern trends were making more sense than others. I came to a few realizations about this, and I thought I’d write them down here.

I’m sure some of you might ask “Why write about this now?”. The world as we know it has transformed due to the COVID-19 pandemic, and while many industries are still adjusting to this new environment with remote work, the software industry has been blazing trails with many companies actually shutting down their facilities in favor of a full remote workforce (more on this observation later). While one might think this is unprecedented even for the software community, this was a long time coming and was one of the realizations that I had while I embarked on this journey into looking back and understand how we got here.

As I write these down, I hope to start up a discussion to see if other folks are observing similar things and are coming to the same conclusions. Hopefully, we can have a meaningful discussion, maybe even figure other changes that are required.

That’s it for now. Stay Tuned!