Issue 59 - Job Security Is a Myth. How to Build AI-Proof Skills.
Drunk Post. Who is Hiring. 35 Simple Health Tips by Experts. It Ain’t Broke- Why Software Fundamentals Matter More. Hands-on Jetbrain Air. UnTrap YouTube. Skills Are AI Proof. AI Chatbots & much more.
When I got my first job in 2015 after being jobless for a year, Within 3 months in the company I realized that job security is a myth.
Watching other developers’ “This is unexpected” reactions to AI layoffs feels surprising to me. It seems they were thinking that their job is safe.
Layoffs are bad. Being jobless is bad. But believing your job will be safe for years is really bad. It create an illusion of security.
The hard truth is that anyone can fire you at any time. Business and Market fluctuates all the time. You can get laid off even when it’s not your fault. You did the best but still got laid off.
I am not saying to stay in fear of losing your job all the time, but to prepare for it. Make yourself valuable by adapting and upskilling. But the question is, how do you do that?
There is good news and bad news. The bad news is that its boring. But the good news is that it has been working for decades and still works. Here is the list based on my experience.
Understand the product from a business perspective. What to build matters more than how to build it.
Try a lot of things. Explore widely to build your taste and gut feeling.
Master the fundamentals. Frameworks and languages come and go. Software design principles don’t. And design principles matter more than ever.
Communicate well. Read and write as much as you can. It’s the best cognitive fitness routine for the mind.
Take accountability and ownership of everything you do.
Learn how to get things done. Generating Ideas is easy. Execution is hard.
However, the current state of concern for software engineers is AI. But we need to understand that AI is just a tool. And like any other tool, the value of any tool comes from the person using it.
The real survival strategy is simpler than it sounds: develop your competence, stay visible, keep applying, and wait for luck and timing to align. When a good opportunity comes, even if you are not ready, take it. If things do not work out, move on and try again.
What’s one thing you’re doing right now to stay valuable, regardless of where you work?
💼 Jobs to Apply:
Mobile Staff Software Engineer by Nubank (Brazil)
The Mobile Platform’s mission aligns with Nubank’s commitment to delivering the best experience for our customers by ensuring a high-performing, stable, and seamless app.
Within Mobile Platform, focuses on providing user-friendly, scalable, high-performing, and cost-efficient app infrastructure components and mobile tools that enable Nubank engineers to quickly and safely test, deploy, monitor, analyze, and improve app flows and features.
Salary : NA
✍🏻 Articles to read
1. Drunk Post- Things I’ve Learned as a Senior Engineer by “luminousmen”
Being a good engineer means knowing best practices. Being a senior engineer means knowing when to break best practices.
People die. Do you want your code to be your legacy? If yes, then spend a lot of time on it because that’s your fucking legacy and you go! But if you are like me, your legacy is surrounded with family, friends, and people in your life and not the code you write. So don’t get too hung up on it.
I got into tech and coding because tech was my hobby. Now my hobby is is the same as work and work has ruined my hobby. So now if I want to enjoy tech I need to quit my hobby. Or I need to be OK that tech is no longer my hobby and find new hobbies.
2. Ghostty Is Leaving GitHub by “Mitchell Hashimoto”
Something is changing on GitHub. There are many outage issues, and individuals such as Mitchell, who hosts Ghostty, are now leaving GitHub.
3. 35 Simple Health Tips Experts Swear By by “Amanda Schupak”
Often when I’m feeling mentally foggy, I use the 10-10-10 rule: Take a 10-second break every 10 minutes to stare at something 10 feet away. This not only helps reduce eye strain from screen time, but the brief mental break can help boost your focus and refresh your cognitive clarity.
Patients, family members and friends often ask me for advice about how to best avoid infections in their lives. My top answer is a simple and no-brainer recommendation: Wash your hands with soap and water. Remember that 20 seconds is optimal.
📺 Videos to Watch
1. It Ain’t Broke- Why Software Fundamentals Matter More Than Ever — Matt Pocock, AI Hero Mattpocockuk
I’ve share before that software fundamentals are the most essential skills we need right now. No matter how advanced AI becomes or how good the code it writes is, you have to be the judge of it.
You must ensure that the code and the design, which are done based on the project context, are easy to understand.The best practices and everything we have been using for the last 20 years revolve around this principle.
Make sure that you spend time on your fundamentals and leverage AI using those fundamentals.
2. Hands-on Air With Dmitry Jemerov and Grigorii Kargin
I am a big IntelliJ fan, and I have been using it for the last 10 years. They launched “Air,” an agentic workflow IDE similar to OpenCode. I don’t have to learn a new tool. 😃
3. Your Mac Is Missing All of These
I found Copytist, Dockdoor, and Fluxmarkdown useful.
🔖Post I Found Useful
1. Ask HN- What Skills Are Future Proof in an AI Driven Job Market?
2. What 7 Months of Marketing CursorClip Taught Me About Growing an Indie Product
🛠️ Tool I Found Useful
1. UnTrap for YouTube
2. Video Editor
3. Create the Hook You Imagine.
😂 Fun and Memes
1. AI Chatbots- Last Week Tonight With John Oliver
2. musicForProgramming();
3. It’s not just new, it’s newspeak
👋🏻 That’s it, Folks
I am currently open for consultation part-time/full-time, specialized in mobile development with Android and Flutter. So if you are looking for someone to:
Build product architecture from scratch
Train existing developers to level up
Fix major bottlenecks in legacy codebase
Improve code quality
And most importantly, ship things faster
then reach out to me at info@burhanrashid52.com.