Now that I ended up finding a job as a waiter (of all things) I finally enjoy learning new things again. Before, I would get chronically stressed researching the job market, gathering keywords from job openings, consuming Udemy courses at 2x speed, using AI to plan the project and scaffold it. I was writing projects to save my life, because my finances are just that bad.
Surrendering and giving up the pursuit of work made all this mental load go away, and ironically made me progress in a personal skill level faster than anything else. I can now learn deeply. I can tinker with code to my heart's content. I can see all the warnings. I can research why this and that happen, without feeling like I have to "sigma grindset" every second.
Perhaps when the storm is gone with the whole "AI is gonna take our jobs" and the market demanding every keyword match, and I feel more confident in myself I'll try to get professional again. Or not. All I know is that I love programming.
Though as for the job market, I’m sure the AI hype will blow over but I don’t think it’ll remain silent for long, there’ll be another nonsensical trend within reach.
Tech needs to keep innovating to keep investors happy and keep investing. That’s why it’s going this AI bubble route. Cause they don’t have any groundbreaking innovations at the moment but want to keep the investors they got when the web was newer and was worthy of the real hype.
It's nice to think that this is just a "tech" problem but unfortunately this is a wider problem in the rich world - it just so happens that "tech" has been the answer for finding huge economic growth for the past few decades. The whole economy is addicted to tech growth at this point (including your 401k if you have one, those of your your friends and neighbors).