There are all kinds of people in tech who are self taught without CS degrees though. I don't think it's that beholden to the universities...at least not like other professions. I think it's simply that people took notice that all the money was being funneled into tech. The MBAs all followed.
What headwinds? The Western world is a consumption driven society (with the US being an extreme version I would say), so I don't think advertising/PR spending will be reduced, just transferred from one focus to another. The businesses that are driven by ad revenues will pivot to wherever the ad dollars go.
> and other laws, like those protecting unions, that defeat at-will employment
This is backwards. Union membership is at its all time low and at-will employment has mostly taken over. A union would be the best tool to curb "boss-ware".
You certainly do not need to build out an entire SPA or use React to reload part of a page just to swap in some HTML or load something asynchronously in the background.
> Google News refuses to permit socially conservative viewpoints (Fox News doesn’t make that list for me) to make up a user’s personalized feed.
This isn't true. I just looked up a few conservative publications, from the center-right to the heavy-on-conspiracy and they all show up as available news sources.
Software engineers can buy worker rights, overtime limits, etc? That's news to me. Also, goes without saying, not every engineer is making FAANG-level salaries.
> I think we probably at some point will realize that food like we ate in the past are way better than it is today and the type of heavily processed food we eat today is unhealthy.
That point is here, right now. Michael Pollan and much of the food blog-o-sphere has been writing about this for years. The article is tone deaf to say the least.
Who ever mentioned anything about repressing thoughts? Quieting the mind does not mean repressing feelings. Observe the thoughts when they arise, but do not judge. This is nothing new.
> At the best of times these routines of habit are just an escape from the stress...
No, not an escape. Amongst the many benefits, exercise, meditation, etc are a means (but not the only means) to quiet the mind and give a pause to thought. They force you to focus on the present moment and not to dwell in the past or future. Humans are incredible prediction machines but generally not all too accurate. Too much time spent thinking about the past and future without balance of the present creates needless suffering. None of this is new and has been known for millennia.
I think that is debatable, at least from the Western standpoint. Much of Western society and its economics produce tremendous amounts of depression and anxiety (rooted mostly in fear).
Be careful for what you wish. As OP alludes, much of your income is taken up by housing, childcare, healthcare, retirement funding, etc. Just about everything is "out of pocket". In terms of safety nets or other societal benefits (e.g. family leave, vacation time, etc) that Europeans take for granted, the US has none to very little. As a result, Americans work non-stop and more than half the country is stressed out on a daily basis [0]. It's really not a sustainable way to live IMO.
> My autoimmune disease is likely caused by modern technical advances
I'm absolutely certain that my autoimmune disease manifested itself later in life due to chronic stress at work (a modern advancement so to speak). While not the cause, it was certainly the catalyst. Now that the proverbial Pandora's box of autoimmune diseases has been opened inside of me, there's no closing it back up and I can only manage it to some degree.
> There's very limited research done on on fixing it and lots done on treating the symptoms. Each commercial I see advertising a new medication to treat the symptoms is like a slap in the face.
Yup, exactly this. You have to take things into your own hands and figure out what works for you in terms of management. Not many doctors are going to take the time to sit down with you to figure out the root cause(s).
> If managing a server becomes just another bullet point in a developer job, this is exactly what we get.
Yup...the same management are the ones that laid off the DBAs, system admins, network engineers, etc because "the cloud" hand waves all this stuff away now.