Career Leverage as a Developer

I was recently on the “I’m a Software Engineer, What’s Next?” podcast. You can view the whole podcast episode and you can subscribe and learn more about the podcast as well. (You can see all my podcast appearances.)

We covered a lot of interesting ground, but one thing we talked about was undifferentiated but scary problems. When you find one of these in the business world, that makes for a good software company. FusionAuth is one example of this. There, we focus on authentication. Authentication is undifferentiated because:

• most online apps need it
• it’s not a competitive advantage for most applications
• there are well known standards (OIDC, SAML, OAuth)

Authentication is scary and risky because:

• it impacts conversion and user experience
• the risk of user data being exposed impacts reputation and bottom line
• there’s jargon
• there’s security risk

Of course the deeper you get into any area, the less scary it seems, but for the average developer, I think authentication is imposing. There are other undifferentiated but scary areas of software development, including:

• security
• performance
• legacy code upkeep
• real time systems
• distributed systems

But one insight that came out of the discussion is that this applies to your career as well. If you focus on undifferentiated scary problems, then you have a lucrative career ahead of you, because the problem is important to solve (because it is scary) and transfers between companies (because it is undifferentiated). If you focus on differentiated problems, such as a scary area of the code base that is unique to the project, you’ll be tied to a particular company. If you focus on safe problems, you can switch between companies but you’re unlikely to make a lot of money, because the problems you are working on won’t be that important.

For new developers, I wouldn’t recommend immediate specialization into a scary, undifferentiated problem. There’s an explore-versus-exploit continuum in careers, and early on, exploration is crucial. You have to find what you are interested in. But at some point, choosing an undifferentiated scary problem and solving it in a relatively unique way gives you significant career leverage. And leverage makes you valuable in the workplace.

It also helps you avoid being a cog. Every employer wants fungible employees, but every employee should resist being fungible. Don’t be “Java Engineer 2” or “React Developer with 3 years experience.” Be someone people want to work with. The goal is for people to say, “I want to work with [your name],” not “I want to work with any React developer.”

By tackling problems that are both scary (high-impact) and undifferentiated (universally applicable), you build expertise that travels with you while positioning yourself as someone who can handle what others avoid.