If you could write one essay to every scared new grad and young person in software… What would you tell them?
Prizes: $10,000 first place / $1,000 2nd, 3rd, 4th, and 5th
Deadline:
Entry fee: $0
It’s a bad time to be a young person in software. At least it is if you’ve been reading the news. And posts. And threads. And comments.
But is dooming the right response? Is every young person in software just cooked? Or is there something more useful we could be telling these people? We haven’t seen a truly great piece of writing aimed at addressing what has become a life-altering anxiety for millions of people. We would like to see one. (Or many.)
You’re writing to people with doubts like:
- “What’s software engineering even going to look like in 20 years?”
- “I’m scared. What should I do? Should I switch career paths?”
- “Claude knows way more than me. What can I do to not become obsolete?”
You have a maximum of 3,000 words. Imagine that whatever you write will be read by every single scared young software person in the world.
What do you write?
Judges
- Geoffrey Challen, Teaching Professor at the University of Illinois, whose intro programming course, CS 124, enrolls several thousand students a year.
- Thomas Ptacek, of Matasano Security, Latacora, Fly.io, and TK, #1 on Hacker News’ all-time leaderboard.
- Athena Kan, co-founder and CEO of Dreambound, which helps people train for new careers.
- Sean Goedecke, staff engineer at GitHub who led the launch of GitHub Models, and author of “How I ship projects at big tech companies” (among many other essays).
- Hillel Wayne, developer educator at Antithesis, author of Practical TLA+ and Logic for Programmers, and writer of the weekly newsletter Computer Things.
- Taylor Troesh, software engineer, designer of the Scrapscript programming language, and writer at taylor.town.
- Thorsten Ball, co-founder of the coding agent Amp and writer of the weekly Substack newsletter Register Spill.
- Michael Hilton, Teaching Professor at Carnegie Mellon and co-author of the New York Times essay “You’re a Computer Science Major. Don’t Panic.”
- Ian Vanagas, editorial lead at PostHog, where he helps write its newsletter, build mode, which has over 83,000 subscribers.
More judges coming soon...
FAQs
Who can enter?
Anyone above 18 (or the legal age of majority) in their country.
Do I have to be a software engineer?
Nope. We envision engineers, PMs, VCs, founders, etc. having possibly the most relevant thoughts on this but we might be totally wrong. Maybe a poet wins. If you think you could write something that these people should read, then write it, regardless of your career path.
What can I write?
Anything. We are open to reading short stories, fiction, nonfiction, advice, whatever.
Does it have to be new?
It has to be your own work, and it can’t have been published anywhere before: not in print, not on a blog, a newsletter, social media, or your own site. If people could have read it, it counts as published. Showing a draft to a few friends for feedback doesn’t.
Do you have any advice?
We encourage you to take the prompt seriously and to think about what you truly believe would be useful for a scared young person in software to read. Put yourself in their shoes. This doesn’t mean you have to write an advice essay, but you could. We would also recommend that you be creative and think outside of the box.
Can I send you something I wrote for another contest?
We’d rather you wrote something new for this prompt. But if an old piece really fits, you can send it as long as three things are true: that contest is done with it (it isn’t still being judged there), it was never published anywhere, including by them, and their rules didn’t take any rights over it. Check their fine print. By entering, you’re telling us all three are true and that you’re free to give us the right to publish it.
Can I post it on my blog, or send it somewhere else, while you’re judging?
Not until the winners are announced. While it’s with us, your entry can’t be published anywhere or sitting with another contest or publication. After the announcement, publish it wherever you like, whether or not you won.
When will winners be announced?
Barring any unforeseen delays, we will announce winners sometime in January 2027.
Can I use AI?
We aren’t your parents, or God. But we discourage using AI to write or to provide you with ideas. We do not think it currently leads to high quality and/or effective writing.
Who is running this contest?
This is a Medium Rare contest. We have run others (see: DEAR ALIENS). PostHog, the all-in-one developer platform, has been generous enough to sponsor.
How can I submit?
Drop your email in the box at the top of this page and we will send you instructions. (We know it is annoying, but we find it helps filter out obvious low-effort and automated AI submissions.)
I have other questions that this page definitely doesn’t answer (and I know this because I have read the page very carefully). What do I do?
You can email us with any doubts or questions at contest@advicewanted.dev. If your question is about contest rules or how to submit, first enter your email at the top of the page and read the instructions we send you. If you still have questions, you can reply to that email.