There has never been an easier time to try and fail. With all the tools available—AI-integrated IDEs, no-code solutions, free hosting platforms, and social media marketing channels—you’d be crazy not to take at least one big swing for the fences. Even more so because of the current trends playing out in tech.
The writing is on the wall for many professions. A degree from a prestigious university no longer guarantees a smooth transition into the professional world, it merely gets your foot in the door. The path well-traveled is well paved but overcrowded. The professional blueprint that worked for your parents will not necessarily work for you, and certainly won’t be advice you’d give your children in ten to twenty years.
There is no safe career path.
Knowledge workers are cheap. Job listings for office work, ranging from software engineers to executive assistants, are open to the world. White collar workers in the west don’t just compete with their peers who live within commuting distance of the office, they compete with the world.
Why hire and train a few junior engineers fresh out of American universities when you can hire twice as many seasoned Argentinian or Indian developers for a similar cost? Middle management might raise some complaints, but to the VCs backing the company and the C-level executives in charge, the choice is usually a no-brainer.
President Trump, along with his inner circle of big tech broligarchs, for all their populist promises, still intend on maintaining or possibly expanding the current trajectory of America’s H-1B visa program. A program that is intended to fill specialty jobs that the American workforce cannot meet, but is currently being wantonly abused.
There’s never been a better time to build.
From hosting to security, from marketing to payment gateways, the tools are all laid out in front of you. All you need is an idea, some drive, and your vision can be online within a day. The cost of failure includes little aside from your time, especially when a domain costs less than a meal from McDonald’s.
So what will it be? A life of corporate servitude that requires you to compete with the world in exchange for a salary that is growing ever more difficult to justify? Or can you build something on your own that stands out amidst the global marketplace of ideas.