It's not an impossible goalpost, you are just making a huge generalization and applying it to nearly everyone.
Understand that the market for software developers is HOT. If you are able to program a computer then there is no recession for you right now.
If you had instead focused really hard on becoming an expert in architecture or civil engineering rather than a computer programmer, you would be singing a different tune right now. I know many people in the construction related fields who do engineering work as difficult as computer science who keep finding themselves unemployed. They are unemployed not becuase they were laid off, they are unemployed because the company they worked for literally went bankrupt becuase nobody is building anymore.
Those people would be better off putting in a middling effort as a programmer than killing themselves to be experts in construction. So hard work in their case is not leading to success.
Now 5-10 years ago when they picked construction as their field, it made a whole lot of sense. Are we in the same place as programmers? 10-15 years from now will you look back and say, crap it looked like a good choice in 2012, but I really wish I had focused on X instead?
Understand that the market for software developers is HOT. If you are able to program a computer then there is no recession for you right now.
If you had instead focused really hard on becoming an expert in architecture or civil engineering rather than a computer programmer, you would be singing a different tune right now. I know many people in the construction related fields who do engineering work as difficult as computer science who keep finding themselves unemployed. They are unemployed not becuase they were laid off, they are unemployed because the company they worked for literally went bankrupt becuase nobody is building anymore.
Those people would be better off putting in a middling effort as a programmer than killing themselves to be experts in construction. So hard work in their case is not leading to success.
Now 5-10 years ago when they picked construction as their field, it made a whole lot of sense. Are we in the same place as programmers? 10-15 years from now will you look back and say, crap it looked like a good choice in 2012, but I really wish I had focused on X instead?
Time will tell.