What beautiful writing. I had no idea JVN did so many things..
"Can we survive technology?" got me thinking about our industry's upheaval. Software engineering's receiving the disruption it so proudly inflicted on other industries.. not reaping what it sowed; rather just the natural order of things.
Acceptance and moving with change is all that can work. Obstructing; denying; ignoring progress.. you'll lose your edge, your relevance, your value to others, and your job. Progress won't wait for us to like it. We must move fast enough to survive change.
Junior engineers for example? Suddenly too junior to be hired? Great! They, and you, can access multiple answer boxes with every PhD ever, and with a bit of creativity, they can leverage that. The best will survive on their own - the rest we should help along. Let's create tools and structures and institutions and help junior engineers finish their education to marketable levels. Let's help them find efficiencies and get there in the same duration. We shouldn't compel companies to preserve a hiring pipeline; now should we incrementally upgrade university educations. Better to go to kids in schools & universities and stimulate their creativity, get them using new tools in new ways, finding efficiencies - because that's what today and tomorrow's jobs will be about. Institutions will adopt the good ideas in time.
We have a responsibility to invest in - and invent - ways of bringing people along.