As an engineer working at a "well-funded" startup, how can I prepare for the worst?

Have 6-12 months in an emergency fund and be prepared to move out of SF if you'll burn through all of that fund.

Don't sign a new lease or buy a house or a new car.

Diversify. Put money in things that are uncorrelated with tech money. Keep your CV up to date and work on transferrable skills - e.g. see if you can get your job title changed to one that implies some level of management responsibility.

be good at programming?

Being good at programming is useful, but planning what happens if random changes in the business screw you is still useful.

I've been a software engineer for going on 20 years now. Have a plan, just in case, even if you're good at programming (I am.)

Not necessary, still less sufficient.

Hahah.

Such a wonderful story! There is so much emphasis on brilliant execution in software (and startups), but creativity is not celebrated enough. As with this story, it's not necessarily bad or good, but it is this way.

"You made this? That's cool bro, but how can we create a business out of it?"

A decade is a long time in the tech world.

Machine learning and big data are already getting a lot of interest but if you want to see trends, you can refer to companies like Google, Miscrosoft, and Facebook investing humungous amounts of capital on forms of Virtual Reality/Augmented Reality.

This has the potential to disrupt many industries if executed well and as a result, specialists in those fields will be in high demand.

Although she did end up with good results, I too felt that her attitude was a tad too pretentious. But hey, whatever floats your boat.

It didn't seem pretentious so much as unfairly entitled and demanding, and potentially insensitive to the needs and interests of possible co-workers.

But it's interesting to watch someone coming at it from that angle, instead of the usual 'give employers anything they want' view.