> I feel like I’m a failure You are being failed, you are not a failure. This is not a privileged career, it is a (relative to other careers) lucrative one - s

> I feel like I’m a failure You are being failed, you are not a failure. This is not a privileged career, it is a (relative to other careers) lucrative one - some within it are privileged, they make bay area housing money, have ownership and stock. FAANG roles, where the most privileged or most prepared to succeed often land, are remarkably stable compared to your experience - such that a layoff is huge news and not just another tuesday like elsewhere in the industry. Many who speak about software development are in this position, and they know nothing else. The contract game is not a privileged game - it is a working class job, where often people live near paycheck to paycheck renting in HCOL areas. For folks on contracts or at low or mid tier companies with mid tier pay, the work is more often than not tightly managed, low trust environments. You get "butts-in-seats" managers, you get "kiss-the-ring" leadership, you get micromanaged, you get no agency, and you don't get basic human respect. You are your output, and your output needs to meet near-arbitrary expectations regardless of your capacity. If you are sick because of the stress working at a place, they will move onto the next person. This is not the reality for most of the optimistic high risk tolerance (IE: safe and privileged) people on Hacker News, but it is the reality for a huge amount of SWEs. Privilege is relative in this industry and it broadly follows the same lines. Those who already have a lot will be safe, and those with little have to work 3x as hard to have a chance at parity. That isn't to say that one can't rock out, become extremely well respected, make a lot of money, do a startup, or get recognized from skills - the industry does an okay job at not being entirely credential focused, though its gotten far more so in the last 5 years.