It is very hard to move from one social class to another unless there is a big low probability windfall that happens. Especially moving away from poverty to a middle class life is extremely difficult. Poverty traps like poor health, bad nutrition and inadequate education can create a self-reinforcing cycle that will keep sustaining. While poverty was very evident before with visible signs like clothing, upkeep, housing, food etc; neo poverty is not very evident.

There is no proper definition of neo poverty. But the concept is the same as poverty, it is very hard to move up from a position. People look successful from the outside but they are hustling in a dead end job. When it comes to software development, there was a natural progression of doing one’s job every day and gaining skills to become a senior, lead, architect, chief architect without much deliberate effort. The reason was that people were able to upskill themselves easily. Complexity of work, quantum of workload, learning horizon were manageable enough to upskill and move ahead.

Work became increasingly complex in software engineering. What looked like a natural progression is no longer easily feasible. Just like how a nurse cannot become a doctor just by working in the hospital, unless pursues a degree outside of working hours to become a doctor; same is becoming true for software engineers. The increasing demand of longer working works and hustle culture has forced people to repetitively do the same things again and again without the progress that was once possible.

This perpetual cycle of getting stuck in one position is one of the neo poverty situations we have. It looks rewarding in the short term when we comply with neo poverty traps like 996, but it ruins the chances for pause, rest, reflect and upskill. Ask yourselves if you are stuck in a loop of doing the same things over and over, then you have to be deliberate to alleviate yourself from neo poverty.