The market hasn't gotten easier since I first wrote a version of this. It's gotten stranger — and faster. Becoming, or staying, a software engineer in 2026 can feel daunting, but it's not all doom and gloom. The engineers who are winning right now are the ones who adapted to how the work actually gets done today, not how it got done in 2021. I stay in perpetual job-hunting mode — not because I'm looking to leave anything, but because it keeps my skills sharp and lets me give the veterans I mento...