Ask HN: Should I Give Up Software Development to Pursue Data Science?
I'm 23 and I've been programming since my teenages and found no problem being hired short after high school.
However, since January I've been working at a company where there are academic and non-academic engineers in a split proportion. Since then, I've been under a constant impostor syndrome pressure inside my head.
Before joining my current workplace, I always thought I was a good programmer for my level and that during time I would become a Senior one after getting more experience. I just needed to keep working and learning new languages/frameworks.
Now, I'm being exposed to more theoretical concepts all the time and after looking at the curriculum of my co-workers and their Masters/PhD thesis I started to fell like I know nothing, I just know how to press keys and watch the compiler do its work.
Since then, I feel like I'm just a replaceable worker in an industry that now just employs me/pays me well because we are in the middle of a tech bubble that will inevitably end — leaving behind only those that know well the hard science stuff. This feeling started to worsen as I read articles foreseeing that developers will be replaced by neural networks some time in the future. How would you approach this issue?