Leverage as a Software Engineer

The author argues that software engineers gain leverage by building knowledge in niches with low demand but even lower supply, and that early adoption of a technology, combined with genuine passion for it, creates the most bargaining power. The post uses Rust as an example, saying that engineers who learned it four to five years earlier, when few companies hired for it, had far more leverage than those learning React today, which it describes as late-stage and expected knowledge for Full Stack Developer roles. It adds that Paul Graham preferred hiring engineers with prior Lisp experience when founding Viaweb, and that leverage also depends on knowing when to exit a declining technology, such as PHP.