Leaving tech altogether and working for dystopian companies like Meta are just two choices in a broad band of possibilities. You could also go work for yourself.
What if you were a brilliant young engineer and you wanted to work for a growing company that is being run by sophisticated business leaders who are financially successful enough, and who respect and value their employees so highly that they can afford not to do any of this degrading employee tracking at all?
Well I wouldn't consider myself particularly sophisticated, but I run just such a business myself.
So... no! It's not too late!
You can absolutely do that. But you'll have to network hard and find those people.
It's not impossible, and you may have to work some of those less-desirable jobs in the process. I have a theory that you'll actually find more of those companies as AI proliferates because the work that a single good engineer can do is being scaled very quickly.
