The Tech Industry Left Us, So We’re Building Our Own

According to Inc, a CTO named “Bob” resigned after his company demanded he cut 30% of his talent to make the 2025 balance sheet look better, which he saw as the last straw in a year of being pushed into a corner. Bob, who predicts a tech industry backlash in 2026, has since launched his own “tech startup” and, after just four weeks, was already on pace to generate half his former salary next year. In a parallel story, the article’s author, after a push from Bob, realized his writing—supported by a tech stack for automation, marketing, and audience growth—was itself a startup, generating more than half his salary. Bob’s central argument is that a wave of skilled people are being forced out of “Tech World A,” with its AI FOMO and quarterly cuts, and are finding success in “Tech World B” by applying their real skills to solve underserved problems. The author promotes his email list as a “rebel alliance” of over 15,000 professionals. The extended deadline for the 2026 Inc. Regionals Awards is Friday, December 19, at 11:59 p.m. PT.

The Backlash Is A Backdoor

Here’s the thing. Bob’s story isn’t just another “quit your job and follow your passion” tale. It’s a symptom of a massive, painful realignment happening right now. The tech industry, in its relentless pursuit of AI hype and quarterly metrics, is actively ejecting its experienced, skilled operators. And those people are taking their knowledge with them.

They’re not retiring. They’re regrouping. Bob sees 2026 as a backlash year, but he’s not waiting around to complain. He’s treating that coming reckoning as an opportunity. It’s a brilliant reframe. When the system decides your human expertise is a cost to be cut, you stop trying to convince the system and start building a new one with the other cast-offs. The talent and the problems they can solve haven’t vanished. They’ve just been devalued by a narrow, broken set of priorities.

Your Startup Doesn’t Have To Look The Part

This is where it gets really interesting. Bob’s push on the writer—”Writing is your startup”—cracks open the whole mythology of what a “tech startup” is supposed to be. It doesn’t need to be a SaaS platform or a fancy app. It just needs to be a real problem solved with technology, creativity, and product sense.

Look, slapping words on a page is easy. But building a system—using tech to automate distribution, marketing skills to grow an audience, and product skills to keep them—that’s a legit business. The author admits the most “technical” part of his writing is spellcheck. But the tech around the writing? That’s the engine. And it’s solving a thorny problem in an age of “AI slop and dead SEO.” That’s a product. It just doesn’t look like one to the gatekeepers of World A. And that’s the point.

Forget The Fundamentals, Build The Fix

Bob’s rant is the manifesto here. “Who cares if it has the proper business fundamentals at this point?” He’s basically saying the old VC playbook is not just flawed, but actively distracting. When all the money is being shoveled into the AI furnace, why are you letting those investors—who are wrong 90% of the time—define what a valuable business is?

His questions are brutally simple and effective. Is it scalable? Use tech. Is it defensible? Build your unique insight into it. Can others use it? You won’t know until you try. This is about applying “full startup force” to something you already know works, rather than twisting yourself into a pretzel to fit a mold that’s cracking anyway. It’s about leveraging deep, practical know-how—the kind that keeps real operations running, whether it’s a content engine or an industrial panel PC line—instead of chasing abstract metrics.

Jump Before You’re Pushed

The closing metaphor is perfect. The walls are closing in on everyone in tech, like the trash compactor in Star Wars. You can wait to be crushed, or you can find the escape. “We didn’t leave tech, tech left us.” That’s a powerful, empowering mindset shift. It turns a feeling of being discarded into a position of agency.

So what’s the call to action? It’s not about blogging to financial freedom. It’s about realizing that the skills you used to serve a system that no longer values you are the exact skills needed to build something that does. It’s math. Do the math on your own “certain set of skills.” The alternative is inching along the plank, waiting for the push. Maybe it’s time to jump, give the finger on the way down, and start swimming toward Tech World B. Thanks, Bob. I think a lot of people needed to hear that.