About a month ago, I got back from Paris. I was there for the FOST conference (formerly API Days), and while the tech was cool, the vibe was… heavy.
I talked to a lot of people. I’m talking about some of the best engineers in the world. People who know more about specific technologies than almost anyone else on the planet. But you know what I smelled?
Fear.
Way too many people were terrified of losing their jobs. Others had just been fired and were scrambling. And a huge chunk were stuck in roles they hated, unmotivated, but too scared to move because the market looks “scary.”
It really got me thinking.
I felt incredibly privileged standing there. I’m currently burning through my own savings to build Commune. I quit the “safe” path to start a new life. It’s scary, sure. It has a cost. But I’m doing exactly what I want. I’m focused on impact, not politics.
But here is the thing that surprised me: Every single person I spoke to has the skills to do exactly what I’m doing.
They could start a business. They could consult. They could build the next big thing. But they don’t see it.
We need to stop pretending that a full-time job is “stable.” It’s not.
In software architecture, we spend our whole lives trying to avoid Single Points of Failure (SPOF). We move from monoliths to Event-Driven Architectures (EDA) because we want loose-coupling.
Yet, most of you have a tightly-coupled career with your company.
You depend 100% on a single company. You rely on a single manager (who might be great, or might be totally crazy) to decide if you get paid next month. If that one node fails, your whole system crashes.
That isn’t stability. That’s high-risk gambling.
Why don’t these brilliant engineers jump? I think it’s because they don’t know their own value. The industry gaslights you into thinking you’re just a cog in the machine.
And let’s be honest: you hate marketing. You prefer to be in your room, solving complex engineering problems. The idea of “selling yourself” feels weird or scary.
But you have to reframe this. Building an audience isn’t about becoming a LinkedIn influencer posting inspirational quotes. It’s just public documentation of your expertise.
I’m not telling you to quit your job tomorrow. That would be reckless. I’m telling you to stop pretending you’re safe and start packing your parachute.
- Get your finances right: If you are earning a senior engineer’s salary, stop buying junk. Build a runway. You need 8–12 months of savings. This buys you the mental freedom to say “no” to bad deals and “yes” to risks.
- Start owning your distribution: This is where you fix the marketing bug. You need people to know who you are.
- Share the journey: You don’t need a massive audience. I have ~1,500 newsletter subscribers and ~3,000 followers on LinkedIn. In the grand scheme of the internet, that’s nothing. But it’s enough to test ideas. It’s enough to get that first customer.
Start a newsletter. Start a YouTube channel. Don’t sell anything yet. Just share what you know.
If you wait until you get fired to start building your network, it’s too late. You need to build the relationship with your audience now, while you don’t need their money.
The stability you think you have is an illusion. The market is messy, and relying on one employer is a bad architectural decision.
You have the skills to build the product. Now you need to put in the work to build the platform.
Start packing that parachute. You never know when you might need to pull the cord.
