I can only really see this coming to an end after a Facebook IPO hits the market. Until then, it does feel like a period of "irrational exuberance" all over again.
Fred's article highlights the risk to Facebook if there's a bubble and it bursts. As well as looking at some serious security/privacy challenges at the platform level and a hard-to-sustain engineering pace, they also need to worry about how long irrational exuberance continue. If they IPO at $10-$20B, that'll be a sign of air leaking out of the bubble. If they hit the wall before IPO, or crash badly in the first six months out of the gate, it'll be a lot more dramatic.
As engineers the only thing we can do is to be prepared that demand for smart programmers may go down. Save the cash for the rainy day. And enjoy the ride till the rainy day.
