> He also survived because he's been constantly updating his tech skills

I feel lucky that the stuff I pursued independently in my 20s (but wasn't paid to work on) has started to become more professionally relevant in my 30s.

My natural inclination is to double down on those things (e.g. ML, Actor Systems, FPGAs) and allow myself to be excited about finally working on what I find interesting, but I worry that I might be missing out on up and coming ideas while even those skills gradually become commoditized or outdated.

For now I think it's enough to keep an eye on Arxiv and look for challenging problems think about...