Timescales matter. The modern internet’s only a bit over 25 years old, and common developer compensation has been truly crazy only for maybe 15 years of it. Easy to predict a bubble, difficult to predict the size or when it ends. People were starting to notice in the 70s, and take it seriously in the 80s, that the idea of a career was changing. Nobody could expect to work for one company for many years anymore. In the 90s, that expanded to industries—most people don’t (or shouldn’t) expect to work in one TYPE of job for an entire career.
The advice seems pretty solid to me—it’s worth examining what durable value you can provide, and preparing for leaner times by diversifying your time/energy/financial investments away from “future earnings in this job will take care of me” to “many sources of future income”, some of which will likely continue. But that’s not zero investment in a programming career. In the short- and medium-term, you can provide a lot of value and make a lot of money. Do that.
Timescales matter. The modern internet’s only a bit over 25 years old, and common developer compensation has been truly crazy only for maybe 15 years of it. Easy to predict a bubble, difficult to predict the size or when it ends. People were starting to notice in the 70s, and take it seriously in the 80s, that the idea of a career was changing. Nobody could expect to work for one company for many years anymore. In the 90s, that expanded to industries—most people don’t (or shouldn’t) expect to work in one TYPE of job for an entire career.
The advice seems pretty solid to me—it’s worth examining what durable value you can provide, and preparing for leaner times by diversifying your time/energy/financial investments away from “future earnings in this job will take care of me” to “many sources of future income”, some of which will likely continue. But that’s not zero investment in a programming career. In the short- and medium-term, you can provide a lot of value and make a lot of money. Do that.