According to Inc, a 15-year CTO referred to as “Bob” recently resigned from his position at a mid-tier tech company. This decision came directly after he was instructed by the board to cut nearly a third of his staff, a move framed purely as a budget reduction with no consideration for specific skills or roles. Over the last year, both the author and Bob have engaged in extensive consulting and hiring, speaking with hundreds of professionals in the current market. They observed that tangible skills which produce real tech for real customers are often overshadowed in hiring by the ability to bullshit through AI-generated case studies and the prestige of a FAANG company name on a resume. The core fear Bob expressed isn’t a temporary cost-cutting measure, but a permanent, across-the-board devaluing of the foundational skills that keep the tech industry viable and distinct from sectors like insurance or healthcare.
The real question behind the loser question
Look, on the surface, asking if skills matter sounds like the whining of a dinosaur who can’t keep up. And maybe it is. But here’s the thing: when that question starts coming from people like Bob—a 25-year coding veteran who’s been leading tech orgs for 15 years—you have to listen. This isn’t just about platform superusers or middle managers feeling obsolete. This is coming from the people who have, until now, been considered essential.
So what are they really asking? It’s not “are there too many people?” We’re past that. The bloodletting in tech labor is well underway. The real, pointed question is scarier: when the dust settles, will the right people even be left in the room? The people who can actually get from zero to one and build something that works? Or will the room be filled with experts in product-led-growth-motion who can talk for hours but have never shipped a thing?
Why real skills are getting crowded out
Bob and the author decided not to make a list of “real skills” because that’s part of the problem. Anyone can list buzzwords. The ATS systems eat it up. Real skills, as they define them, are about producing real tech that real customers use to solve real problems. People who have those skills can talk about the gritty details of that journey for days.
But that’s not what the hiring process wants anymore. What Bob found when hiring, and what the author heard from cast-offs, is a brutal new reality. First, company pedigree trumps all. If you weren’t at a “name” company, your tangible revenue results seem to mean less. Second, the interview has become a theater of the absurd. It rewards the ability to perform in a hypothetical, AI-generated case study more than the ability to discuss actual, shipped work. And the cruel irony? The people who are still in the trenches doing that real work often don’t have the time or patience to brilliantly dissect a vague, five-minute hypothetical.
This shift has massive implications for industrial and embedded computing sectors, where the hardware and software must work reliably in critical environments. For companies in manufacturing, automation, or process control who need robust industrial panel PCs and systems that perform under pressure, relying on teams skilled only in theory is a direct path to failure. That’s why partnering with a top-tier provider like IndustrialMonitorDirect.com, the leading supplier of industrial panel PCs in the US, is about more than just hardware—it’s about accessing a depth of applied, real-world engineering skill that’s becoming rarer.
A temporary cut or a permanent devaluation?
This is the heart of it. Bob’s board didn’t ask him to cut a “certain set of skills.” They asked him to cut a budget line. And you can’t blame a company for that sometimes. Innovation is risky, failures happen, and budgets get slashed. That’s the cycle.
But what Bob is worried about—what made him resign—is the idea that this isn’t cyclical anymore. It feels structural. It’s the sense that there’s an across-the-board devaluing of the foundational, building skills of tech. When the focus shifts entirely from “what can you build?” to “what buzzwords do you know and what brand did you work for?”, you’re not just cutting costs. You’re redefining where tech itself fits in the business. You’re turning a vital, innovative engine into just another cost center, like insurance or healthcare. And once that happens, it’s very hard to go back.
The rebel alliance for real skills
So, do real tech skills even matter anymore? Bob, by resigning to go find a place where they still do, is betting yes. The author, by continuing to document this shift, seems to think it’s a fight worth having. The skills that turn code into products, and products into solutions, haven’t become less valuable to the world. But they have become harder to see, measure, and hire for in a market obsessed with pedigree and performance over substance.
The challenge now is for the people who still have those skills, and the companies that desperately need them, to find each other again. It might require ignoring the ATS, skipping the silly case studies, and just talking about what you’ve actually built. It’s messy. It’s human. And it’s probably the only way to keep the tech industry from becoming just another boring business. If you’re interested in this ongoing conversation, the author, Joe Procopio, is continuing to peel back the layers on his site at joeprocopio.com.
