As someone deep in nihilism and political cynicism, I can concur, this is no real solution.

The problem is I don't believe leaning into that world is a solution either, and anyone who says otherwise, sounds like my boomer parents who have Fox news streaming on their 80" TV that they update every year, in their 4500 sqft home.

I mean this genuinely and not to stoke a fire, comments advocating for leaning into the political world really feel naive and perhaps generational. Most younger people have a damn near impossible time feeling anything other than dread and sadness when thinking about the state of politics.

I'd love to have a genuine reason to be hopeful, but regardless of which party you believe in, it feels like we're all circling the drain here.

Your post really resonates with me, but the rub is (at least for me) "living a fulfilling life" means other trade offs, and potential losses.

Maybe fulfilling to me is something that doesn't fit nicely in the box of traditional society... am I ready to give all that up?

Your idea and how well you can execute on it, i.e. how well you understand the problem space, is what has always mattered.

Coding being so easy now has just pulled back the curtain and shown the world that software developers really don't have much left to contribute. It's been done, a thousandfold.

Flawless software isn't the goal, ever. Feature development is almost always the primary goal, and fixing bugs and performance issues is only done if the bug is bad enough.

I just don't see how we keep going like this without layoffs. The company cannot responsibly continue paying for this many engineers, when half, or less, could do the same job.

engineers tend to think as engineers do, solving all problems with features, quality improvements, etc. but those all drive costs up, and don't always provide the return we think they will.

I have no idea if you've traveled much, but this has not been my experience traveling throughout major cities in Europe.

There's often NOT public bathrooms ANYWHERE yet streets are much cleaner than somewhere like San Francisco, where there actually are some public bathrooms.

Still needs a LOT of work IMO.