🪦 That chart reads like a gravestone.

🪦 That chart reads like a gravestone.

Stack Overflow didn’t “dip”. It effectively closed as a daily habit, and the timing lines up perfectly with AI going mainstream.

For ~15 years, it was the default place developers went when they were blocked. Then, in late 2022 onwards, the curve breaks (the founders sold Stack Overflow in 2021 for $1.8b, just before the collapse. Good for them).

• ️ Stack Overflow won’t be the last.
• ️ SaaS is in for a tough ride this year

🌶️ If I were the CTO of a medium-sized organisation, I'd already be executing a deliberate cost-out initiative from the Office of the CTO:

1. Pull the complete list of software subscriptions
2. Sort by annual cost (high → low)
3. Select a handful of prime candidates
4. Build internal replacements
5. Decommission and lock in savings, including build cost + total cost of ownership

You don’t need to boil the ocean. A few decommissions can fund the capability, then the flywheel starts.

What’s on your subscription list that won't survive the next 24 months?