[nostrademons]

It's cyclical in tech too. There are subfields of tech where one person can still do useful original work - cryptocurrency, for example, or drones, or some of the low-level kernel hacking like the recent io_uring post. The key is "impact", though - because those are currently hobbies that aren't really ready for mainstream consumption, you're not really going to make an economic difference with your work. There's a tipping point that needs to be crossed where a little subfield becomes a big business, and then suddenly all the folks that were playing around with that technology end up sitting on a gold mine of a career.