Ask HN: How do you deal with the increasing global race to the bottom?

IMO, you are on the right path by looking beyond hyper specialization. There is a devaluation trend for all type of labor. Sooner or later your hyper specialized labor will also be devalued. Will this devaluation happen in your lifetime, that is the only open question?

In the end, we all are either a labor provider or capital provider. With the ongoing devaluation of all type of labor, instead of moving from one type of labor to another type of labor that may get devalued in the future, you should be thinking and planning about moving from being labor provider to becoming capital provider. You might want to consider exploring labor to capital conversion path.

- Maximize labor to capital conversion rate. Favor "love what you do" over "do what you love."

- Maximize storing of capital. Favor much lower spending than what you make.

- Maximize capital generation through stored capital. Favor experiences over things.

Once your capital is generating enough capital, you no longer need to focus on the devaluation of labor. You can focus on doing what you love irrespective of the value of that labor.

>> What are some strategies to deal with this beyond picking a hyper specialization?

Well, stop thinking about it. Not only it is depressing but it is also seriously wrong.

I've been hearing that since before I started. Not only did it never happen, but it's getting more unlikely to happen every day.

It's not possible to commoditize something that 99.xxx% of people are unwilling and/or unable to do.

Yes, most people simply don't want to sit at a computer all day and/or don't have what it takes to be a decent programmer. And everyday the barrier to entry is getting a bit harder with more tools and more technologies and more abstractions appearing, each adding a bit more complexity over the precedent.

If anything, look around you and watch the race to the top for the few who can follow. There are entire companies in our industry which exist to attract and bread the best and the brightest.

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Now, I can understand why some people would be afraid of a commodity market.

Somewhere in the world, there will ALWAYS be a guy who only has $10 to pay for whatever thing he wants done AND there will ALWAYS be a guy that will offer to do the job for that price.

That first guy will always accept the offer because he has no seemingly better alternative and he'll just burn the money hoping to get something in return. (note: ain't gonna happen. You just don't get anything real for $10).

The point being: Just because there are some guys with no money and some guys who are screwing them. That doesn't mean that it's a "commodity market", let's just call that a "scam market".

Anyone serious who wants to get the job done or anyone who can get the job done will simply NOT participate in this scam market. When we're talking real work, there is simply no commodity market whatsoever (in our field).

For many in the field, a bigger issue than commoditisation is probably wage gaps between higher and lower cost regions of the globe. While it should not be expected that the average person can or even could compete with top-notch developers, for most of us, we still have to compete with good developers in extremely low-cost regions. Until the globe evens out in cost-of-living, this issue should continue to exist. Until quality programming and engineering do not require substantially above-average intelligence, these professions should not become a commodity.

I fail to see how a majority of people can generate money via capital. Investment income only works when there are people willing to take the investment money and produce goods or services. In a world where the majority have an over abundance of capital, and little to nobody to actually work to produce, where would the value be created? The system works right now because most people are poor and have to work to live rather than invest to live.

I don't understand these types of questions. If you can program, can't you create stuff? Stuff that people are willing to use/buy?

Techies will always think as techies. A techie that can think like a businessperson is as rare as a unicorn.