Software Engineering Talent is Gold Right Now

The post says the software engineering job market is in a bad place, but experienced engineers with a maverick attitude can still create extraordinary leverage. The main example is using automation to turn formulaic work into productive output, even when some steps used to require human input.

It applies this to marketing a startup through daily sprite packs on itch.io. The author describes precomputing themes, using a startup service to generate the packs, customizing each page, and automating much of the process with ChatGPT. They also automated the creation of showcase videos with thematic music and narration, and say tools like Cursor with o3 MAX can turn a well-defined problem into an automation script in minutes.

Reading notes

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• The text says the job market for software engineers is bad, but that this kind of talent still delivers much more leverage and productivity today.
• The author says experienced engineers with a maverick attitude can automate tedious tasks and also workflows that used to require human steps.
• The central example is marketing a startup through the creation of daily free sprite packs on itch.io, which attract most of the customers.
• The process includes defining themes in advance, generating the packs with the startup service, and building customized pages on itch.io with colors, fonts, descriptions, and tags.
• Part of this workflow has already been automated with ChatGPT, and the author also automated the creation of presentation videos with thematic music and narration.
• The text says that a well-defined problem, described in a few paragraphs and pasted into Cursor with o3 MAX, can become an automation script in about three minutes.
• The author concludes that this turns them not only into a technical founder, but also into an entire marketing department.