It's so funny, because that phrase when I hear it suggests going with the ML/AI flow.

"becoming water" is a double-edged sword -- if there's a storm out or really hot, it's a bad time to be water. You kind of want to be rock then.

The point is that going with the flow feels like it could easily be interpreted either way (as in -- go all in on AI/ML)

Only someone who claims to have all the answers would make such bold incorrect assumptions about who I am and what I know. The demand for my specialty is waxing, I'm likely safer than most work-a-day software developers, and it's my third career. Don't talk to me about becoming water in my career and life. I also don't think that lacking my brain plasticity and marketable cognitive profile should disqualify someone from easy access to food, housing, and health care. So if that body of water drains into the ethically feeble sewer of self-absorbed SV business culture, I'll opt for evaporating on a rock instead.

So hope for the unconditional basic income or become water ...

Or rather than blaming people who are getting stepped on for getting stepped on, the rest of us can:

a) Admit socioeconomic mobility has plunged in the US, so when you're down, it's a lot harder to get up. Stepping on people to climb to the top was always a scumbag move but now it's a lot more consequential than it used to be.

b) Recognize that absolute meritocracy is a myth. People lacking socioeconomic status and/or one of the "it" cognitive profiles don't have the same opportunities for growth, especially when young, which changes your whole career trajectory. That is not something you can change no matter how watery you are.

c) Realize that people are intrinsically worthwhile and dismissing them as collateral damage for your profit is immoral.

d) Recognize our moral obligation to create a just society and act on it.

I know it's a lot more convenient to pretend the people you're walking on are part of the floor but that doesn't make it true. Homo-sapiens didn't become the dominant humanoids by being stronger, more aggressive, or greedier-- we were able to cooperate. That concept is anathema to SV business practices.