>Basically, don't hack computers but people around you.
Ding ding ding! I agree with most of your advice, but this is the heart of it. People are very basic machines. Your job as an employee is ONLY to a) make your boss feel good and b) make your boss look good.
Protesting this is simple naivety. The sooner you internalize and accept it, the better off you will be. I have met multiple men who've lost everything at retirement age because they were naive and allowed themselves to be lulled to a false calm by slick workplace politicians. These events are _not_ pretty.
In software, there is a natural merit barrier to performing even the minimal job functions that can allow us to confuse it for a meritocracy. This is why slick MBAs are reluctantly forced to accept people with basic hygiene problems inhabiting corners of their offices. But mistaking this for actual respect for merit is fatal faux pas.
This is a simple reality that most of the rest of the world was forced to accept during their first jobs out of high school. Software engineers are spoiled, and far too many of us allow it to go to our heads.
>There is no future in software development as a job.
You're getting some push back on this because it's not really universally true. It depends on the individual's goals and ambition. You absolutely can spend 30 years as an employed software developer if you're happy with where that leaves you (and a large number of people are, and there's nothing necessarily wrong with that).
However, if you want to be more than an employee/pawn, if you want to make decisions, if you want to get more than a pittance of the proceeds -- you must accept and realize that your field of operation must be human psychology, and it must be correctly applied in its various forms (politics, marketing, etc.).
The sooner this is accepted, the better. Literally just in the last couple of weeks, I watched a multi-million dollar company with dozens of employees get wrested away from a competent (if complacent) engineer by useless, image-obsessed political hacks.
The kicker? That's not the first time it's happened to him.
Do not let the small successes that people are forced to give based on merit go to your head, or you'll end up like him.