You Don’t Need to Build Apps for a Living
What I tell young people who want to get into tech
Everything will depend on technology one day. From how we learn to write, to how we find love and start families. And when that happens the tech industry will have no equal — no industry, government will be able to match its power. Tech will run the world.
It should not come as a surprise tech careers in tech are booming. Over the last decade or so the Bay Area, the home of Silicon Valley, turned into a black hole for talent, swallowing engineers, designers, marketeers and sales people from all over the world. All while creating a housing crisis in the process.
Are careers in tech the best, and only way to go, though? Should everyone be learning how to code, A/B test, pitch and growth hack? And should anyone not turned on by technology be worried they won’t be able to make a living doing something else?
I don’t think so. As the cliché Silicon Vally saying goes, “in a goldrush you can mine for gold or you can sell pickaxes”… Or, in fact, anything else: bagels, coffee, sneakers, studio apartments—anything, really. Techies are humans too, they need to eat, drink, walk and sleep sometimes.
This is especially true when so many people pay so much attention to tech. In the world where everyone’s obsessed with downloads, unique daily users, churn rates, shares and likes other industries are left wide open. Gourmet food trucks, artisan coffee and urban lofts are just the beginning.
Yes, technology changes everything. Yes, the tech industry’s gravitational pull is not just eating, it’s swallowing the world. But that does not mean tech is the only place to build a meaningful and sustainable career. To the contrary. The boom in tech is an opportunity to do something else too.
