Just Learn to Code

The Mirage of Easy Freedom—and the True Meaning of Abundance

Early in my career, software engineering seemed to promise financial freedom, creativity, and meaningful social impact. Tech companies promoted themselves as hubs of innovation, offering attractive salaries, appealing perks, and genuine purpose. Their messaging highlighted investments in employees and social contributions, sparking widespread enthusiasm and drawing many into technology careers with sincere curiosity and optimism.

Successful tech workers eagerly encouraged others, suggesting prosperity was achievable by simply learning to code—no formal degree required. Initially heartfelt, this advice became oversimplified and dismissive. The meme swiftly spread online, reducing human ambition to a narrow route: coding. It implied genuine success and societal worth existed only in tech, trivializing fields like teaching, care-giving, arts, and trades, and ignoring structural barriers such as limited educational access, inequality, and discrimination.

Casual encouragement—late-night study sessions and shared resources—soon morphed into aggressive marketing by bootcamps and influencers. Ads promised rapid career transitions, overshadowing the steady, disciplined effort required. Many borrowed heavily, convinced that instant transformation was within reach. But there are no shortcuts—meaningful careers require time, effort, and resilience.

For every celebrated success story, I saw many talented, dedicated individuals quietly struggle. After completing intensive training programs, they entered an overcrowded job market, competing with countless other bootcamp graduates and STEM degree holders for limited roles. While some found supportive environments, many were met with unrealistic expectations and little mentorship. Employers, focused on speed and productivity, offered minimal guidance, expecting immediate results. These challenges, compounded by rapid technological change and job market volatility, left many feeling unprepared and unstable. Rather than recognizing the systemic nature of these obstacles, individuals often blamed themselves, internalizing their struggles as personal failures.

Over time, the oversimplification of software engineering eroded both confidence in the field and its perceived value. Once defined by disciplined problem-solving, critical thinking, ethical reflection, and sustainable innovation, the profession became narrowly framed by slogans like “Move fast and break things,” “Disrupt or be disrupted,” and “Just learn to code.” Training programs and employers increasingly emphasized short-term productivity and easily marketable skills, reducing engineers to interchangeable technicians. Broader concerns—ethical design, social impact, and long-term sustainability—were dismissed as obstacles to rapid monetization. This shift not only diluted the profession’s identity but also constrained technology’s ability to address real societal challenges.

This troubling trend echoed my own experiences entering college during a widely publicized STEM shortage. Politicians, industry leaders, and educators portrayed STEM careers as secure and patriotic, vital to innovation and economic competitiveness. Yet many graduated into the turmoil of the 2008 financial crisis, facing prolonged unemployment, limited opportunities, and heavy student debt. Instead of respected contributors, we felt expendable, easily discarded in pursuit of short-term profits. Industry narratives shifted, casting skilled workers advocating fair treatment or equitable compensation as burdensome or entitled. Now, warnings that technical roles might be replaced by AI further erode confidence, making even highly skilled professionals feel replaceable and undervalued.

Economic policies reinforce this betrayal. In crises, corporate risks are socialized—trillions mobilized to rescue banks in 2008 or billions of forgiven PPP loans during the pandemic—while individual debts, especially student loans, remain personal responsibilities. Young people encouraged to invest in their futures are later told relief is undeserved or fiscally reckless. The message is clear: when corporations falter, the state intervenes; when individuals struggle, they bear the consequences alone.

Recent economic policy debates, exemplified by the passage of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act (OBBBA) and ideas like Ezra Klein’s Abundance, echo a familiar logic: privatizing profits while offloading risks onto individuals. OBBBA funnels resources upward, cutting social supports even as it promotes self-reliance narratives reminiscent of "just learn to code." Similarly, Klein’s emphasis on deregulation as a path to prosperity overlooks how unchecked market power reinforces inequality, conflating genuine democratic protections with bureaucratic inefficiencies. Both examples illustrate how policy choices often deepen economic insecurity rather than addressing structural barriers, reinforcing narrow views of success that prioritize private gain over collective well-being.

This disposability isn’t unique to tech—it reflects a systemic, short-term, profit-driven pattern. Workers retrained for manufacturing jobs in the 1980s experienced similar betrayals when factories closed and jobs moved abroad. Decades later, STEM graduates promised stable careers encountered insecurity during the 2008 crisis, revealing exploitative cycles that repeatedly redirect talent away from public benefit toward speculative gains.

Today, we see this troubling pattern intensifying in the tech industry. Highly trained engineers with the skills to address urgent public needs—like healthcare, climate resilience, housing, and education—are routinely steered toward projects driven by speculation, surveillance, or engagement metrics. Platforms prioritize ad revenue and compulsive use over public benefit. Cryptocurrency consumes vast energy with little social return. Artificial intelligence, while promising, also demands enormous computing power and is frequently deployed in ways that deepen economic insecurity and systemic bias. These aren’t just missed opportunities—they are choices that undermine sustainability, equity, and collective well-being. Motivated by venture capital and stock-based rewards, tech companies increasingly prioritize short-term profit over ethical innovation, worsening the very problems they claim to solve.

There’s profound sadness in narrowly defining ambition. Human talent and creativity now serve simplistic transactional goals measured by clicks or quarterly returns. The "Just learn to code" meme isn’t the cause but a symptom of deeper cultural and economic values prioritizing short-term productivity over ethical innovation, stewardship, and meaningful contribution. This mindset obscures the deeper questions we ought to be asking: How can our economy prioritize shared well-being, equity, and human flourishing, rather than focusing solely on private gain?

True progress must embrace equitable education, universal healthcare, sustainable housing, environmental stewardship, and meaningful work. Economic success should uplift everyone, enabling lives of dignity and resilience rather than merely increasing GDP or quarterly earnings.

Today's AI hype feels all too familiar—lofty promises paving the way for gains at the top and disruption below. Advocates enthusiastically promote AI tools like ChatGPT and GitHub Copilot as transformative breakthroughs promising increased productivity, creativity, and economic opportunity. But beneath this optimistic narrative lies a more complicated truth. Without deliberate safeguards and thoughtful policy interventions, AI could easily deepen existing inequalities rather than address them. Historically, technological innovations have disproportionately enriched executives, investors, and corporations, while ordinary workers have faced job displacement, constant reskilling pressures, and financial insecurity. The rise and quiet decline of initiatives like IBM’s Watson Health exemplify this pattern, leaving employees facing job losses and uncertainty while corporate leaders largely avoided consequences.

Yet, there is hope. We don't need a crystal ball to predict the future—we already possess significant leverage to actively shape it. Corporations and industry lobbyists clearly recognize this, investing considerable resources to influence policies that safeguard their interests. However, organized workers and communities hold similar power. Through collective bargaining, strong unions, worker cooperatives, mutual-aid networks, and democratic participation, we can effectively counterbalance corporate influence, ensuring innovation and economic growth serve broad societal interests rather than narrow private gains. Policies designed to buffer ordinary people from systemic shocks—universal healthcare, guaranteed retraining, fair labor standards, and robust social safety nets—can protect communities from economic uncertainty and technological disruption. Rather than passively accepting a future dictated by corporate interests, we can consciously build structures that foster shared prosperity, human dignity, and genuine economic democracy.

There's a better, more hopeful path forward—one rooted deeply in solidarity, democratic control, and collective empowerment. Instead of workplaces defined by rigid hierarchies, inequality, and insecurity, we can intentionally build organizational structures centered around fairness, cooperation, and mutual support. Worker cooperatives like Loomio in New Zealand and Outlandish in the UK demonstrate that democratically managed tech companies can flourish, equitably sharing profits and decision-making. Recent unionizing efforts at companies like Alphabet further illustrate how collective action can rebalance workplace power, ensuring economic benefits are broadly distributed. Community-driven initiatives and mutual-aid networks offer critical support during economic downturns or technological disruptions, fostering resilience and collective well-being. Publicly funded lifelong education programs, exemplified by Germany’s vocational system and Denmark’s tuition-free universities, highlight how societies can proactively support continuous skill development without imposing heavy financial burdens. These practical examples demonstrate clearly that equitable workplaces and genuine economic democracy aren't distant ideals—they're achievable, functioning models already thriving today.

Perhaps it's finally time for the tech industry—and society as a whole—to move beyond the outdated myth of the solitary genius, the heroic innovator transforming the world in isolation. This individualistic narrative glorifies singular achievements but obscures the collaborative reality of meaningful innovation, which emerges from diverse teams solving complex problems together. Genuine abundance should not be measured by accumulated wealth or the number of billionaires created, but by widespread human flourishing—accessible opportunities, equitable education, robust social safety nets, and meaningful, fulfilling work.

Nearly eighty years ago, President Franklin D. Roosevelt envisioned an "Economic Bill of Rights", recognizing that true individual freedom depends upon fundamental guarantees: meaningful employment, adequate healthcare, quality education, secure housing, and economic security for everyone. Roosevelt understood that genuine abundance isn’t defined by endless economic growth or profits for a privileged few, but by ensuring these basic rights universally.

We possess extraordinary talent, boundless creativity, and remarkable imagination—qualities uniquely capable of addressing humanity's most pressing challenges and profoundly transforming lives. Yet far too often, these precious resources are wasted on superficial slogans, fleeting profits, and narrow ambitions benefiting only a privileged few. Such misuse of human potential doesn't merely represent missed opportunities; it actively diminishes our collective future. It is imperative that we consciously build an economy—and particularly a tech industry—dedicated to meaningful, transformative, collective prosperity. True success should never be measured by towering private fortunes or short-term market gains, but by tangible improvements in people's lives, the strength of our communities, and the equity of our society.

As Amartya Sen reminds us:

“The success of a society is to be evaluated primarily by the freedoms that members of the society enjoy.”

Our progress must be judged by our effectiveness in overcoming systemic inequities, expanding opportunity, and creating environments in which everyone can thrive with dignity, respect, and security. By intentionally directing our talent and creativity toward these deeper, purposeful goals, we can achieve genuine progress—manifested vividly in enriched lives, empowered communities, and a truly abundant, equitable society.

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CommonBytes

This column explores a central question: What should technology’s role be in a world beyond capitalism? Today’s technological landscape is largely shaped by profit, commodification, and control—often undermining community, creativity, and personal autonomy. CommonBytes critiques these trends while imagining alternative futures where technology serves collective flourishing. Here, we envision technology as a communal asset—one that prioritizes democratic participation, cooperative ownership, and sustainable innovation. Our goal? To foster human dignity, authentic connections, and equitable systems that empower communities to build a more fulfilling future.