[dossy]

> Should I even try getting a SE job anymore?

Based on what you've written, my answer is: no. You don't sound cut out for it.

> The market isn't the limitless growth starry-eyed future it was during the first 20 years of the 21st century. Now I imagine with AI, headcounts are just going to whittle down to the bare essentials as junior devs become completely unneeded, thus removing their chance of getting enough experience to level up to senior.

You couldn't be more wrong.

20 years ago, you needed to buy or rent servers, pay for bandwidth, marketing/reaching your audience was hard, eyeballs were expensive, etc. To get a service off the ground, you needed to have at least $50k of cash for table stakes.

Today, you can get a virtual slice of very fast compute with very cheap bandwidth for $50/mo. It isn't unreasonable to work a minimum wage job, live very modestly, for 5 years, covering that $50/mo expense, building a product by yourself, that could become worth $1B or more.

In other words, there is practically limitless opportunity today, whereas before only those with significantly more resources had the opportunities.

If you aren't able to see the incredible opportunity you have in front of you, then yeah, you should most likely get out of the industry, because you ARE right that as software continues to get easier to create through innovation, the need for simple laborers will continue to decline.

[atleastoptimal]

If there is practically limitless opportunity today, what have you been doing to harness it, if you don't mind sharing? Just curious what specific avenues of growth you see as viable/interesting given your experience and insight.

[dossy]

Operating my own consulting practice, working on a startup, working with non-profits, and getting to pick and choose what I work on.

I've been in the industry since the late 1980s, and I will say that things have only gotten better with respect to opportunity as time has passed, and everything going on today is just more signal that things are, at least in the short term, continuing to get better.

Regarding avenues for growth, it's the same story that repeats throughout history: automation. Just as the agricultural revolution and industrial revolutions supported the growth of population through increased output, the technological revolution is having the same impact over the last 20 years.

Despite the radical impact that recent, where "recent" is the past 10-20 years, technological advancement has had on life as we know it, it's my opinion that we are actually only just scratching the surface of the impact that it will have on humanity, likely over the next 100-200 years.

It's going to take a lot of people with a lot of novel ideas to take us through that revolution. And, each step will introduce changes that will free up people to pursue what comes next, to continue to build on top of the advancements that came before.

If that doesn't excite you and make you want to be part of that, then yeah, you probably should find a different career.

With our aging population that's only living longer and longer, there's already a dire shortage of healthcare professionals: perhaps you'd be better suited to pursuing that, instead?