> If you're not sure what technology to get good at, get good at programming. That has been the source of the median startup for the last 30 years, and this is

> If you're not sure what technology to get good at, get good at programming. That has been the source of the median startup for the last 30 years, and this is probably not going to change in the next 10. The challenge with programming as a career now is that most of the solely technical problems have been solved. If you're looking for the YC playbook, start a SaaS that solves a specific problem that people will pay you for, those niches have been very carefully picked over for the last 15 years, and there are few that are very profitable remaining. Most of the big remaining problems are ones of incentives - they are cases where a whole system is fractally fucked up, with lots of human actors all doing what is individually best for themselves but with a sum result that is a net negative for humanity. If you study the housing crisis, for example, you end up with municipalities that need ever-rising housing prices and ever-restricting supply to balance their budgets; residents who depend on their rising home prices to fund their retirement; developers who need to work within the local regulations that are explicitly designed to make their lives difficult; and young people who can't move out because a second mortgage that requires their parents' ever-increasing home equity was used to fund their college education. Finding a better way to build houses doesn't help here; you need to work around all the people who actively don't want you to find a better way to build houses. There is room for software here, but often in subtle and what seems "evil" ways. Your problem is other people; software is useful to the extent that it lets you work around other people. Technical skills are table stakes for this, but understanding people and their incentives is critical for this work.