My (perhaps contrary) view: programmer salaries for the 99% are not really inflated. Yes, there are rock stars (usually managers) getting $250k signing bonuses,

My (perhaps contrary) view: programmer salaries for the 99% are not really inflated. Yes, there are rock stars (usually managers) getting $250k signing bonuses, but they're not the norm. I think that average software engineers ($70-175k, depending on experience) aren't going to see an appreciable drop in pay or job availability. Keep building your skill base and stay the course. It takes weeks (for people with marketing acumen) to make the next hot thing but years to build a technical skill base. The latter has less risk, so that's what you should do. If your career and job conflict, invest in your career, because your job can end at any time. (This advice applies always, not just in late-bubble times.) Divide your time (if you can) between high-level/front-end and low-level/back-end work. The former's good because it makes it easier to get to demos quickly, and communicate ideas in a slick, technological way; the latter, however, is a lot more stable. C and linear algebra and Lisp (the idea) don't change as much over 5 years as web tools. There is a bubble but it's not nearly as bad as the one in the late '90s, and I don't think it's going to wipe out the whole software industry-- it'll just slow down some parts of it.