| First, you’re entering at a time of critical shortage. Not even the tiniest fraction of all the software that’s needed has been written. The world has nowhere near enough software, and it has nowhere near enough leadership. Learn to code, and also learn why we do it in teams. Learn how to be a good team member, and eventually, learn to lead. You’ll always have a useful skill. Second. If you see a bunch of value accruing towards existing players, you’re focused on the wrong thing. Value that’s captured, or on its way to being captured, isn’t available to you - you already missed that boat. Instead, spend your energy creating (and hopefully capturing) new value. AI is creating a huge value transfer to incumbents - but that value transfer, while it looks huge to us from here in 2026, is a tiny raindrop on the roof, next to the huge ocean of value that will be created by coding AI. Consider this - here in 2026, non-technical people can finally make software to solve their own problems. Good software engineers can take those demos and prototypes and “software built for one” and turn them into scalable, secure solutions for the mass market; with architecture and maintainability. Your expertise will let you codify prototypes into amazing products and your positive impact when you look back at age 41 (my current age) will bring you joy. Third and most importantly, be careful of your media diet. Hacker News can be an echo chamber and may not reflect the industry or the world. For example the other day there was a “KDE is dropping X11” blog post. In the post they showed data that only 5% of KDE users are left on X11. But 70-90% of HN comments were Wayland gripes. Whatever you go after, ignore the haters, do what you love. In your time you’ll get to see the industry table flip itself many times - the thing we do is still in its Big Bang, exploding into existence, and it’s wide open. Become a software engineer and it’ll be more fun than the coolest rollercoaster in the world. I envy you to have your whole career ahead! |