I watched one of the best software architects I've ever worked with get made redundant last year.
Fifteen years of building platforms. Complex, high-stakes systems for large enterprise clients. Business-critical systems that entire organizations depended on.
All gone in one day.
And the ironic part? When it was over, he had almost nothing to show for it. Not because he hadn't done exceptional work — he had. But NDAs, client ownership clauses, and the nature of enterprise IT services meant he couldn't publicly reference most of it.
No portfolio. No public proof. No artifacts that said "I built this."
He had knowledge in his head and a résumé full of vague descriptions of projects he couldn't name.
The Builder's Paradox
If you've been a developer for more than a few years, you've probably felt this tension even if you haven't named it. The more specialized and impactful your work becomes inside an organization, the less portable it is outside of it.
I've started calling this singularity: deep, unique expertise that is simultaneously invaluable and invisible to the outside world.
Think about your own situation for a moment. If your current role disappeared tomorrow, how much of your work can you actually point to?
For many developers — especially those working in enterprise, consulting, or services — the answer is uncomfortably close to "almost nothing."
The Single Point of Failure
Most of us in tech — senior developers, architects, delivery leads, engineering managers — are operating with a single point of failure. One employer. One income stream. One source of professional identity.
We wouldn't design a system architecture this way. We'd call it a risk. We'd build in redundancy, failover mechanisms, graceful degradation.
But that's exactly how most of us design our careers.
What Optionality Actually Looks Like
I'm not advocating for quitting your job or going full indie hacker.
The answer isn't to abandon a career you've spent years building. It's to design against the fragility.
Here's what that looks like in practice:
Instead of only building for clients, you document your approach publicly.
A blog post explaining how you solved a specific architectural problem (without naming the client). A small open-source tool that grew out of a pattern you kept repeating.
Over time, that body of work becomes proof of your thinking that no NDA can erase.
Instead of waiting for your employer to define your next role, you test a small product idea on the side — not to replace your salary, but to learn firsthand what it takes to create value on your own terms.
Instead of hoping your next performance review goes well, you build relationships and reputation through what you share — so that if the restructuring email ever comes, you're not starting from zero.
None of this requires 60-hour weeks. It requires being deliberate about how you spend the margins of your time — and who gets to benefit from your expertise.
The Portfolio Strategy
Think of it as applying what we already know about system design to our careers.
No serious investor puts everything in one stock.
No architect designs a production system with a single point of failure.
So why do we put all our professional leverage in one employer?
The irony is that building outside of work actually makes you better at work.
You stay sharper. You think more strategically. You bring back ideas from your own projects that improve how you lead teams and deliver for clients.
It's not an exit strategy — it's an operating system.
Starting Point: The Visibility Gap
If you're reading this and feeling that pang of recognition, start with one question:
What is the gap between what you know and what you can show?
That gap is where your career fragility lives. The good news is that closing it doesn't require grand gestures. It starts with small, deliberate actions:
Write about something you solved this week — the approach, not the client
Open-source a utility you've been copy-pasting between projects
Share a framework or mental model that helps you make technical decisions
Document a project you built on the side, even if it's small
Each one of these creates an asset that exists independently of your employer. Over time, they compound into something far more valuable than another year of tenure.
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