Comment by disgruntledphd2

> It turns out the only right answer is business and marketing skills.

< astronuat meme>

Always has been.

Look, I feel really bad for you, and I hope things get better for you (and the others in this thread).

But it's worth calling out that the post-GFC software world was entirely insane. The low interest rates caused a lot of madness to be funded, and software engineers and other "technical" people got treated with kid gloves because their skills were perceived as rare, and the moonshots only needed to pay off 1 of 100 times for the funders to be happy.

That's not the world we are in today, money is much more expensive, and the mainstreaming of remote work made a lot of businesses think about offshoring even more than they were already. Also with that, there's AI where lots of people believe they don't need tech people any more (they're probably wrong, but it'll take a while to come out in the wash).

> So then what's the point of learning anything beyond surface level?

Because if you learn some useful skills (computers etc), AND you learn how to talk about business & sales, then you can get a better job. The days of just being able to sit in a corner and code are gone for now, but people with enough skills to talk to other humans about their actual problems can definitely do well.

But again, mostly I'm sorry that things haven't worked out for you and that things improve soon.