Does Tiny Nonprofit Hold a Key to the Middle Class? https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/15/business/pursuit-tech-jobs-training.html?partner=rss&emc=rss
My brother, a medical doctor, often used to lament that he didn't become a coder. Once I asked him a couple of "interview" questions to give him a taste of what he was in for, he was like wtf is this real. It's not fun unless you enjoyed math/logic type classes. You have to be wired for it to do well. The net effect of these firms is to lower wages and bring in a ton of incompetent labor. How will you stand out? Answer: don't. Don't waste time participating in that economy. Make your own.
I have to say I'm surprised at the resilience of the market for software engineers. I remember years ago when "bootcamps" were all the rage, with stories everywhere of English majors with no CS background landing 90k-120k jobs straight out of a three-month training program, it seemed like you could only get one of two outcomes: either coding jobs would become sharply divided between grunt workers making 40-60k and a few specialists pulling in six figures, or the number of jobs and pay would stay the same but credentials inflation would quickly make the bootcamps worthless, or some combo of the two. So far though it seems like neither has happened to any real degree.
It has happened! There are so many onshoring body shops that bill out people at $150/hour which is peanuts.
If you're good at what you do, which is delivering working software, then it should be straightforward to take an idea, deliver it and sell it to the market. Your time as a youngster is much better spent doing this every 6 months than anything else you could do. The buildup of small streams will become a waterfall at one point. If you're already an old person like me, then I would suggest you still do the same thing but realize it's much more difficult with a family. Once I had kids, it was extremely difficult to do new projects unless I took months off paid work.
He realized he didn't enjoy his particular specialty. But I think now that he has a good girlfriend, he's made more peace with it.
$150/hr is not peanuts, better than day trading. On the other hand, anyone can day trade but you need some skills to code. I am taking an online class on VBA Excel maybe I will go back and get a day job after I pass my tests.