> The bottom line is that if a young person wants to focus their career on invention—as distinct from scientific research, corporate engineering, or entrepreneurship—the support structure doesn’t exist. There isn’t a straightforward way to get started, there isn’t an institution of any kind that will hire you into this role, and there isn’t a community that values what you are focused on and will reward you with prestige and further opportunities based on your success. In short, there is no career path.
This resonated with me; long story short, that describes pretty well how I feel about my career so far. That being said, for software developers I think the situation isn't so bad. PARPA addresses the harder problem of invention in the "world of atoms" -- but in software it's feasible to do freelancing/consulting and then have flexibility to spend time on open source. I might be switching to that soon, after having spent the past few years on entrepreneurship. I wish I had thought seriously of freelancing + open-source as a career path while I was in college (or even better, before college; it could've saved me a lot of time on homework!).