I think there's a recipe for becoming one of the dreaded "code monkeys":
- "Hey, I could make a bunch of easy money writing code!" So, off to school for a degree, not bothering to learn anything other than VM-based languages and web development.
- Get a job and never crack open a book (or read a paper) on software again.
- Only learn new stuff as it pertains to your immediate work.
I see this time after time in the resumes that I encounter. I think the half-life of a software career that follows this pattern is about 15 years and that's probably being generous. These people will spend most of their time either being taught the ropes as an industry newcomer (which is fine) or being told what to do by others (because they didn't keep their skills up). Their agency never really develops because their skills stagnate relative to the people who do get with a program.
I don't mean that someone should work all day then go home and commit like crazy on personal projects, that's also terrible advice. But it's not hard. For instance, if they spend an hour a week reading a conference paper then that's 50 papers a year and they're probably learning new things (or are at least aware of what they don't know); spread the subject matter around and after a few years of this they'll be in conversations like "Hmmm, this feature we want looks a lot like that consensus thingy I read about a few months ago, and they solved it by..."
"Wow, how'd you know about all that stuff?"
Reading a couple papers, maybe an hour or two a week, why?
The G-G-GP is terrible advice because someone who is even a little motivated and who exercises above-average career upkeep can do really, really well and have a long tenure writing software. People will want to work with them, even. Managers will ask their advice on a regular basis! Advising people who are technically inclined that getting an MBA is unconditionally better is just, well, wrong. I could be more forceful.
tl;dr; if you treat your software career like an actual career (and not some kind of easy con on the world that will continue to pay off for decades) then you'll probably get good results.
