Some Kind Of Crisis

I am a cockroach.

I’m a survivor.

I know how to survive in different environments. I’ve done it my entire life.

Born in Hong Kong, I’ve had to adapt to living in a completely foreign country when our family moved to Toronto when I was 7 years old. I had to learn English quickly; learn to punch and kick back when I was bullied at school. I then had to learn how to survive being a poor kid in a private school full of rich kids when we moved back to Hong Kong during my sophomore year.

My environment was constantly changing and I’ve had to adapt.

When I began my career, I knew I had to make jumps at appropriate times to climb up. I took opportunities when they arose. I saw trends and jumped onboard. That’s why career has gone from civil engineering to finance to software development.

Getting into finance was a pragmatic decision. Living in one of the most expensive cities in the world is not easy. Making money is high up on anyone’s priorities in order to live the good life. Working in finance gave me money and a skillset I can use as a safety net. It’s an evergreen skill. Getting into software development was based on interest and seeing the prevelant trend: software is eating the world.

Lately, I’ve been doing a lot of pondering. It has to do with my craft: coding. Specifically, I, like many other software developers, are starting to lament the waning days of our craft. James Somers, a fantastic writer and programmer, put it succinctly:

“Bodies of knowledge and skills that have traditionally taken lifetimes to master are being swallowed at a gulp. Coding has always felt to me like an endlessly deep and rich domain. Now I find myself wanting to write a eulogy for it.”

So it’s time again to re-evaluate what my next move should be. Because the trend is clear: the value of coding skills will continue to depreciate.

I think in a world of limitless AI-generated code and content, the new value center is taste. That is, having an eye for quality and choosing the best. I will write more about this idea in a later post since this was a recent shower thought moment.

So I guess what I’m trying to say is: to survive in our new age, this cockroach needs to appear more like a butterfly.