More Than Technical

TLDR: The tech industry is becoming a winner-takes-all arena. Traditional paths are dying, AI is eating entry-level jobs, and you have about 5-10 years to get rich or get replaced. Stop preparing, start taking.

“In tomorrow’s tech world, you’re either the one building the AI, or the one being replaced by it.”

Let’s cut straight to the chase: the odds are stacking up against junior folks trying to break into tech today:

• Mass layoffs have frozen hiring across the industry, with even tech giants slashing thousands of positions monthly
• AI and automation are breathing down our necks, replacing entry-level positions at an alarming rate
• Hiring managers have become numb to “average” achievements after seeing thousands of identical bootcamp projects
• Global talent pools have exploded with remote work and immigration, turning local competitions into worldwide battles

The tech landscape isn’t just harder – it’s transformed entirely. The bar for junior engineers and career switchers isn’t just higher; it’s in the stratosphere. We’re talking about a fundamental shift in what it means to be “qualified” for a tech role.

Is this a bad thing? On the grand scheme, probably not. It’s forcing people to be more driven, more motivated, more dedicated to succeed. The days of skating by on a basic CS degree are dead and buried. But let’s be real: not everyone with a CS degree is landing that $300K/year cash position at FAANG (e.g. Facebook, Google, Amazon, Microsoft, Apple, etc.). In fact, the vast majority have zero shot at such roles straight out of school. And I’m not talking about a small majority – we’re looking at 95%+ of graduates who won’t even get past the resume screen.

People ask me for advice on how to get ahead of these curves. Here’s the unvarnished truth, and fair warning – you’re going to dislike it.

Advice for Coders starting out

I’ve been writing code for the past 36 years. That’s a lot of code. Started at 6 years old, writing BASIC on an Apple IIe that my dad brought home. Then graduated to PASCAL, Visual BASIC, MS-DOS Batch and then Borland C and Java, moved to C++, Objective-C some C# and JavaScript, Python obviously, recently TypeScript, all the while learning the secrets of Bash, ZSH and PowerShell and other more obscure languages like Go, Rust and even Elixir, LISP and Lua. I’m probably forgetting many languages and coding “situations” I went through like MSSQL/TSQL/PLSQL and HTML, CSS of their kind and several other task-specific code-ish things. This is just to explain and show to you, junior coder, that coding (for real) is a lifetime pursuit. Just like my journey, you will hear similar things from just about any other lifetime programmer that you know.

Advice for People Joining the Workforce

Working in the service of something bigger than yourself is a pillar of humanity. It enabled all riches and privileges we have in our world. It is how people have built society for eons. There’s no doubt today that being employed keeps you balanced, satiated and healthy (in a way). It’s the best tool to support yourself and others. But at the same time, it takes away many of your freedoms. Before we dive in, let’s set a few things straight.

At the core of employment stands a simple principle: An employer is hiring you for value you bring to the business which is less than the compensation they pay you. Get it? At the core of employment, the principle is that someone is getting bigger value from your work than what they pay you. No business ever, if it’s a well-functioning business driven by real metrics, will pay you more than the value you bring – otherwise they will either hire someone else for less or not hire at all. If you ever own a small business, you will learn this simple principle very quickly. No business is charity.

Advice for young graduates

Lots of bright young folks ask me “How do I get a good job?”, “How do I achieve success in this domain?”, “What should I do next?”, usually in the applied computer science or machine learning field. So, I thought I’d dispense some advice for all future advice seekers, and I may refer some people here, so I don’t have to repeat myself all that much. Although, feel free to come up and ask a question.

Graduating, from anywhere, is daunting. Going from a well understood environment where your achievements are precisely measured, into the world where, frankly, no one cares. You have to make up your own metrics, measure yourself up to them, set goals for yourself and have a roadmap and a timeline. There’s no “graduation” from life. You may think it’s retirement, but that would not only be wrong (since there’s life after retirement) it is also immensely subjective and domain specific. So, what metric would you choose? Money in the bank? Sq. ft of your home? Number of dependents? Assets? Papers published? Books read? Miles traveled? BMI? Social subscribers? See? It’s impossible to pick. It is foolish to pick. Don’t pick. Not right now at least.