I wrote this in September 2018. It's about comfort zones, safety nets, and why having a fallback can be the thing that holds you back.
The cruelty of the comfortable fallback option is that it makes you soft.
If you know there's a lazy, stable safety net at the bottom, you will never truly fight. You'll hedge. You'll half-commit. You'll retreat at the first sign of discomfort.
Old wartime wisdom: fighting men with nothing to lose is harder than fighting an army with everything to lose.
The 2025 version
People clinging to "safe" careers that AI is about to reshape are fighting with everything to lose. The ones who burned the boats and went all-in on building? They're the ones with nothing to lose and everything to gain.
I see it constantly. Engineers who could be building incredible things are instead hedging — keeping one foot in a corporate role "just in case," half-committing to side projects, never going deep enough to break through. The safety net isn't protecting them. It's anchoring them.
The ones who made the leap — who went independent, who shipped something with their name on it, who bet on themselves — they're the ones who adapted fastest when the tools changed. Because they had to.
Burn the boats. Or at least stop pretending the boat is a mansion.