She was tired not from resumes or interviews, but from engineers, still negotiating like it’s 2021.

The “golden bubble”.

Where every frontend engineer was a unicorn and every offer had quadruple-digit equity, that bubble still shapes expectations. But the market today is more like… reality.

It’s not that talent isn’t valued. It’s that value has changed shape.

The engineers who bristle at lower stock grants or extra days in office aren’t wrong to want fairness… they’re just anchoring to a world that no longer exists or might quickly disappear.

I don’t believe in surrender. I believe in recalibration.

What happens when we stop pretending the market is unchanged, and start asking: How do I create a career that isn’t a bubble-dependent bet? What do I build that isn’t tied to a single job title or company’s stock price?

The most interesting people I talk to today are already thinking in parallel streams: mentoring, writing, consulting, advising, building side projects, diversifying, not out of fear, but because the old narrative of one job = stable identity doesn’t hold.

I’m curious: do you have side income as a software engineer? If so, what’s worked (or not) for you?