Ask HN: What did you learn too late in your tech career?

That ultimately, the industry wants engineers to manage the business, instead of managing software.

If I had known this I would not have gone through university at all. I would have attempted my own business from the start and learned on my own.

Instead the entire school system seemed to be about learning technical knowledge, from math and physics in high school, to computer science in university. Then you go to interviews and you get technical tests, followed by some technical focus at the beginning of your career... but then after a few years once senior level expectations start to kick in... the expectation shifts and it's about learning how the business works, and how to make profit with software.

It was confusing why this shift happens in software. It might make sense in other industries where younger people need to replace older people (i.e. something with physical labor). So I'm now reevaluating how to look for a company that will leverage all of my existing technical knowledge or I will need to reconsider what to do because my career expectations don't align with the average software company's engineer expectations.

I'm not sure this is universal. For a lot of "full stack" type jobs sure, the complexity is not the code but managing business and how code fits in that. However I think there is still a lot of hard science problems out there which require a full technical education.