If I had to guess, he is likely a front-end engineer and I can kind of sympathize with some of his gripes because I've dabbled with front-end/full-stack work my

If I had to guess, he is likely a front-end engineer and I can kind of sympathize with some of his gripes because I've dabbled with front-end/full-stack work myself (benefits of working at a small company and getting to wear different hats) and it seemed absurd to me how much churn there is in the field and how much extra effort you need to put in to remain relevant from an employability standpoint. If your place of employment still uses 5-10 year old tech (and that would be perfectly reasonable) the skills you develop at work aren't necessarily making you more attractive to current employers. Even though I was never going to be a full-timd front-end developer, I couldn't fathom having to put in the extra effort outside of work just to keep up with developments and the latest and greatest in the field while trying to manage a healthy work-life balance. That being said, I don't think that is really the issue here for this person. It reads as someone who has no real passion for programming or his craft and went into the field for perhaps the wrong reasons. I love coding and software engineering. I've loved it ever since I was a child and started with GWBASIC. Even though I went down a different path and ended up with a PhD in Physics, I ultimately couldn't be happy without coding in my life and I ended up self teaching myself almost everything I know and making a career switch (ML Engineer + SWE) and I simply can't imagine doing anything else. I'd still choose this path even if I earned half my salary because I enjoy what I do. But I felt exactly like the author in my prior career which over time felt more and more like a grind and something I did just to maintain the status quo and help support my family. The person who wrote the article just needs to make a switch to something they are passionate about, or something that they are equally dispassionate about but provides more compensation (don't recommend that trade-off personally). His issues have very little to do with the field of computer programming itself.