TLDR: The tech industry is becoming a winner-takes-all arena. Traditional paths are dying, AI is eating entry-level jobs, and you have about 5-10 years to get rich or get replaced. Stop preparing, start taking.
“In tomorrow’s tech world, you’re either the one building the AI, or the one being replaced by it.”
Let’s cut straight to the chase: the odds are stacking up against junior folks trying to break into tech today:
- Mass layoffs have frozen hiring across the industry, with even tech giants slashing thousands of positions monthly
- AI and automation are breathing down our necks, replacing entry-level positions at an alarming rate
- Hiring managers have become numb to “average” achievements after seeing thousands of identical bootcamp projects
- Global talent pools have exploded with remote work and immigration, turning local competitions into worldwide battles
The tech landscape isn’t just harder – it’s transformed entirely. The bar for junior engineers and career switchers isn’t just higher; it’s in the stratosphere. We’re talking about a fundamental shift in what it means to be “qualified” for a tech role.
Is this a bad thing? On the grand scheme, probably not. It’s forcing people to be more driven, more motivated, more dedicated to succeed. The days of skating by on a basic CS degree are dead and buried. But let’s be real: not everyone with a CS degree is landing that $300K/year cash position at FAANG (e.g. Facebook, Google, Amazon, Microsoft, Apple, etc.). In fact, the vast majority have zero shot at such roles straight out of school. And I’m not talking about a small majority – we’re looking at 95%+ of graduates who won’t even get past the resume screen.
People ask me for advice on how to get ahead of these curves. Here’s the unvarnished truth, and fair warning – you’re going to dislike it.
The De-Sensitivity Crisis
Hiring managers and recruiters are drowning in a sea of “qualified” candidates. Making an impression isn’t just harder – it’s nearly impossible without something extraordinary. The problem isn’t just volume; it’s that everyone looks the same on paper. Another TODO app? Delete. Another machine learning project that classifies cat pictures? Straight to the trash. Another blockchain wallet? Please.
But what does “making an impression” actually mean for an engineer? This distinction is crucial, and most candidates get it completely wrong.
To be impressive, you need something that’s undeniably yours. Not group work, not team achievements – something personal that you can claim 100% credit for. No “I was part of the team that…” or “I contributed to…” statements. Here’s what counts:
- Open-source projects with serious traction (we’re talking hundreds, preferably thousands of stars and million+ downloads). Your weekend project with 5 stars from your bootcamp buddies? Not even close.
- First-author papers in top-tier venues (at least one for MS, four+ for PhD, plus 2-3 / 4-5 supporting papers equally). And no, your university’s research journal doesn’t count.
- Patents or awards from major federal programs or national institutions (your name, front and center). The local hackathon prize won’t cut it anymore.
- Massive social following (tens of thousands of followers minimum, millions of engagement marks). And we’re talking about real engagement, not bot farms or engagement pods.
- Money. Numbers. If you can say you’ve personally been able to clock millions of $$$ in revenue to your company and be able to show it – that’s all it takes.
Anything less? Hiring managers won’t even blink. They’ve seen it all.
The Path to These Achievements
Let’s be brutally honest: you need to borrow, hustle, and fight for every opportunity. And when I say fight, I mean it literally – you’re in a gladiator arena where only the most aggressive survive. Mostly because the other gladiators are faceless, nameless ghosts that just want to feast on your human brain.
Publications
Want papers? Muscle your way into top labs. Offer to work nights and weekends. Do the grunt work – data cleaning, figure creation, statistical analysis. Start as the fourth author and claw your way up. Be relentless. Take rejection as a challenge, not a stop sign. I’ve seen successful candidates camp outside professors’ offices, volunteer for the worst tasks, and work 80-hour weeks just to get their name on a paper. That’s your competition.
Projects
Building something great isn’t enough – you need to be a marketing machine. Spend as much time promoting as coding. Give away value, but make it count. Target audiences beyond the US if needed. Learn SEO, social media algorithms, and growth hacking. Every star, every download, every GitHub fork is a battle you need to win.
And here’s the controversial take: don’t dilute your success with contributors. This is your spotlight – own it. I’ve seen too many promising projects die because their creators were too nice, too willing to share credit. In 2025’s tech landscape, being nice is a luxury you can’t afford.
Awards
Unless you’re that one-in-a-million genius (newsflash: you’re probably not, just like 99.99999% of us), you’re competing on pure grit. Even with talent, you’ll need insane work ethic. I’m talking about the kind of dedication that makes your friends think you’ve lost your mind.
Awards are lottery tickets, but you can read the odds. If your gut says you don’t have a shot, move on fast. Time is your most precious resource, and you can’t waste it on long-shot bets. I’ve seen candidates spend years chasing the wrong awards, only to end up with nothing to show for it.
Social Following
If you haven’t started building your platform 6-8 years ago, you’re already behind. Way behind. Today’s tech influencers didn’t just appear overnight – they’ve been grinding for years, building their presence post by post, tweet by tweet.
But here’s the silver lining: those other achievements (projects, awards, papers) can catapult your social presence. Just keep it organic – people smell fake engagement from miles away. And remember, in tech, your social media presence is becoming as important as your GitHub profile. Companies want engineers who can be advocates, who can attract talent, who can represent the brand.
A Glimmer of Hope (For Now)
These barriers seem impossible? They are. That’s the point. Breaking through them – that’s what makes it impressive.
But there’s still the traditional path: Start with a decent (not spectacular) internship, grind out 2-3 years learning big tech’s playbook (frameworks, tools, workplace politics), then make your move upward. This route probably has 6-10 years left before AI closes it for engineers, especially in software. But the window is closing fast, and the competition is getting fiercer by the day.
Consider this: In pre-ChatGPT 2020s, a decent post-grad internship at FAANG might have required a 3.5 GPA and some school project experience. Today? Companies are expecting interns to have contributed to open source, built full-stack applications, published work, and mastery of multiple tech stacks before they even start.
Your advantage? You’re reading this now. You’re aware. You’re planning. This window of opportunity won’t stay open forever. If you’re taking the traditional route, start yesterday. Actually, start last year.
The Next Phase (10 Years Out)
In five years, AI will be crushing engineering roles. Jobs will exist, but only for 10-100x engineers with deep AI milage. Everyone else? Automated into obsolescence. Today’s frameworks already provide so much boilerplate that even basic LLMs can piece together solutions. Tomorrow’s frameworks? They’ll make today’s automation look like stone tools.
Here’s how it plays out: Today, if an LLM agent tackles a complex programming task (reading 100,000 lines, writing 10,000 lines) at $1, with a 1% success rate, that’s $100 per solution. In five years? That same solution costs a penny. Organizations will unleash hundreds of thousands of agents, throwing thousands at each task. When 999 fail but one succeeds – at that cost – humans become optional.
Think about that for a minute. When the cost of failure approaches zero, brute force becomes a viable strategy. Why hire a human who might take a week to solve a problem when you can launch 10,000 AI attempts and get your solution in minutes?
And ten years out? Software development as we know it dies. Need software? An agent fashions it instantly, more like searching a vast directory than building from scratch. The entire concept of “software engineering” becomes as relevant as “horse-and-buggy maintenance.”
The signs are already here. Look at the tools released in just the last six months. They’re not just helping developers – they’re replacing them. Every new LLM release makes more junior dev tasks obsolete. The trend isn’t slowing; it’s accelerating.
How to Prepare
Don’t.
Instead, get rich as fast as you can. Look around – solo entrepreneurs are already building AI-powered empires. They see the writing on the wall: individualism (and tribalism) is back. Be self-reliant. Pay yourself first. Don’t share the spotlight. Be ruthless about your goals.
The era of the comfortable, steady tech career is ending. What’s replacing it? A winner-takes-all gladiator arena where only the most aggressive, most adaptable, and most ruthless survive. You’re either building the AI tools, or you’re being replaced by them.
Your time starts now. Every day you spend not building your empire is a day your competition is getting ahead. Every minute you waste trying to “prepare” for the future is a minute someone else is spending taking what could have been yours.
Good luck. You’re going to need it.
And if you think this sounds harsh or unfair? Welcome to tech in 2025. It only gets harder from here.