For much of the last decade, software companies just focused on growing as quickly as possible. That changed in 2023. Profit and operating margin became the industry’s watchwords.
As interest rates climbed and corporate technology budgets got cut, hawking computer applications began to look less like an endless well of expansion. Investors grew tired of the growth-at-all-costs mindset that had dominated the software industry since the great financial crisis.
Management teams responded by firing workers, offshoring labor, paring back benefits, closing offices, ending speculative projects and scrutinizing their own software budgets. Broadly, they tried to replace cultures of abundance with ones of frugality.