The Only Way Out Is Through
The Only Way Out Is Through
I guess this is the unofficial 3rd part of what’s become my unofficial guide to the 2024 programming/tech industry. First I touched a little on the impact of AI-driven coding tools on jobs, then I spoke a little about the quality of the software engineers available today. Things are looking a little grim for our plucky software developer in 2024. They also don’t look like they’re going to get much better.
So what does one do when automation finally comes for their job? I think the traditional advice to factory workers and machinists who were automated out of jobs is to up-skill - I think some people even recommended these folk learn how to program the very machines putting them out of a job. Oops.
Up-skilling is well and good, but what does a programmer up-skill into that also isn’t under threat by AI automation? The kinds of jobs we used to think were safe from automation - creative jobs that we thought only a person could do - are precisely the kinds of jobs being automated. We have AI assisted application development tools, design tools, marketing copy and advertising tools. I’m sure people are working on replacing every single job title in a company with an AI tool.
I don’t think it’s a good time to be a programmer in the middle of their career right now. I think it’s even worse to be a programmer at the beginning of their career right now. If you’re at the start of your career, you’re making a mistake if you’re not:
focusing on the bleeding edge of large language models, statistic learning and machine learning in general
focusing on the nitty-gritty hardcore math and low level performance programming that will be required to take advantage of the tech related to the above bullet point.
Honestly though - I’m 40 this year, there’s no way I can see being able to go back to school for a PHD in AI or anything else resembling credentialed learning. It will take me too long and impact my income too severely to make the math work in the immediate term, and by the time I get that credential the industry will likely have moved past me rendering my PHD out of date at best, irrelevant at worst in the long term. I imagine I’m not the only one who finds themselves in this situation.
Yet the world doesn’t care that it took away our ability to make money. Your bills still pile up and nobody is feeding you for free. Watching the demand for the way you make a living disappear is terrifying. The easy thing to do is to ignore everything and hope that it will all work itself out. The smart thing to do is to start finding new ways to make money.
Building a business during a down economy is old advice that comes up every time the tech jobs market takes a down turn. It would be irresponsible to ignore the fact that the people recommending you start a business when times are tough are the same people that benefit from you starting a business - especially when times are tough. VCs are looking for forward-leaning companies that will be the next Facebook or TikTok, and knowledge producers want you to buy their guides and courses on how to build businesses.
That doesn’t mean it’s bad advice.
I’ve been a DIYer for a while now. I remember being 16 or 17 and begging my dad to help me build a TV stand. He told me that it was probably a waste of time - we weren’t going to significantly improve on designs available in furniture stores, and it also would probably cost more. I didn’t care. I didn’t have a TV stand, and he had the wood, knowledge and skill to create one. It was silly to me that we wouldn’t even try.
He was right - it took longer, cost more and didn’t look particularly nicer than a store bought one. But I had it without having to pull out my bank card, and I learnt how to do rudimentary wood working. Ever since then, many purchasing decisions were weighed against the potential of DIYing the same thing. Over the years I’ve mostly bought things, because my dad was right, and occasionally made things myself - either because they were ludicrously expensive for what the thing was, or more importantly to this piece, because the thing I wanted didn’t exist.
I think it’s that DIY spirit that colours my perception of the world right now. I look into the programming industry and hear how hard the jobs are to find, how hard they are to get an interview for, and how grueling and intense the interviewing is once you finally get there. And how hard those interviews are to pass. All I can think is “why don’t you DIY it?”
I can’t remember when the mental switch happened. I think it was during the Covid 19 pandemic. I was feeling a lot of ennui and lamenting how I felt trapped into a life of just working. My social life was non-existent and it felt like all I was doing was waking up, working, watching a bit of TV as I ate dinner then going to bed and repeating it all. What kind of a life was this? Who’s fault was it?
It was my fault. My life was just happening to me. I believed since childhood that a job was a sacred thing and must be protected at all times. Your reputation follows as a means of building a career out of those jobs. Safety was obtained by being a good employee who followed all the rules and did what he was told enthusiastically. Life was literally finding a lord and being a serf. Money was only earned with permission from someone else.
Why did it have to be this way? It didn’t. I made it that way by believing that the only way for me to make money was to live as a serf. I had no understanding of my own agency. You might have no understanding of your own agency. Did you know that getting a job isn’t that different from working a contract, consulting with a client or even running your own business? All of them at their root involve trying to convince someone to give you money in exchange for some kind of service.
A job is a consultancy of one with a client of one. It’s a “permanent” contract. It’s selling a customer a product - your knowledge, experience and skills are the product and your company is the customer. These activities all funnel down into “convince someone they’ll either make or save more money than they spend on your services”. That’s interviewing for a job, that’s pitching a client a proposal, that’s negotiating a contract and it’s marketing a product to a customer.
Unless you’ve literally never gotten and held a job, you have the skills you need now to take your future into your own hands. You’re already selling, just change to whom and how you sell. Start by working a contract. Shorter term than you’d prefer, nothing longer than 6 months. During the pandemic, I worked a handful of small contract for friends. I felt more empowered as a consulting programmer than I ever felt as an employee. I knew that if this project didn’t go well, there would be another. There’s always more work.
It’s different, I won’t say that it’s not. You’re acutely aware that the work you’re doing is temporary, and in a week/a month/3 months you’ll need to find another job. You get used to constantly scanning job boards for opportunities, pitching projects and winning and scheduling them or not winning them and moving on. You start to form a pipeline of work for multiple bosses who all pay you for your work. One lost contract is replaced by a won contract, and your income stays stable as long as you’re constantly recognizing opportunities.
This is remarkably similar to running a company and trying to make sales. Only instead of pitching your services directly to other businesses, you’re pitching a service or a product directly to other people who, theoretically, want to spend their money to solve a problem. Maybe you’re still cold outreaching or maybe you’re instead running online advertising campaigns. Instead of a handful of bosses, you now have hundreds, thousands or even more. Every customer is also your boss. At the end of the day, you’re trying to convince someone to give you money.
The business isn’t the goal. The consulting → business ramp is just a path. The goal is the understanding that you have your own agency when it comes to making money, even if right now you don’t see it or can’t imagine it. Businesses have been created and died long before the first computer was invented. Most of us have a skill we can use to make money, right now - it’s just a matter of finding the people who want to pay for it and figuring out how much they want to pay.
You don’t have to start consulting or start a business to make it as a programmer today. But you do need to know how to make money.