That's a deeper question that only you can answer. I can only say that your thinking based on how you phrased it doesn't really lead to happiness in general
In case that would happen - welp, I'm out of job, out of something I went to school and studied for a few years, now without purpose or "real" skills (as LLMs are on the same level as I).
She can try to reach out to possible mentors / people on Linkedin. A bit like cold calling. It works, people (usually) want to help and don't mind sharing their experiences / tips. I know I have helped many random linedin cold messages from recent grads/people in uni
I got into CS because I liked games. I wouldn't know how to ping a host by year 2, in fact, I hated CS and only finished it because my father insisted.
Wasn't until I got my first internship by year 4 that I started to work/enjoy it, and have had a very successful career so far (20y in)
Of course, and that's a meaningful advantage. My point is that product itself can be terrible while its marketing and distribution is near perfect. Some sort of monopoly dynamics I suppose.
This really depends on the company. There are many companies where eng has way more weight than PM. And that eng aren't so divorced from customers. Even big tech.
I feel this is a pretty cynical view. We can all be adults and understand it is a business relationship.
The "reward for loyalty" varies greatly per company, but I would like to see it defined. I have worked on 12 companies since I started my career, some of them would probably rank very high for your definition and others very low.
Why do you feel like you need to keep it up ? The foundation of computing hasn't really changed too much in the last 20 years. Master the foundations and maybe read this site once a week ?
Bezos used to (supposedly, didn't work for him) have the habit to forward emails to reports (direct and further down), with just an added comment of "!" or "?"
"!" was "Do something about this"
"?" was "Can you please explain WTH?"
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