This is one of my fears, as I work primarily modernizing PHP applications. I think it's possible my salary has hit a plateau. Most SMBs do a false equivalence

This is one of my fears, as I work primarily modernizing PHP applications. I think it's possible my salary has hit a plateau. Most SMBs do a false equivalence between PHP developers and junior developers. One place I worked at the owner used to brag about hiring people starting out for $12/hr. The thing is, with my experience in PHP it's easier for me to write secure code in PHP than anything else at this point. I can do it really fast, too. I've internalized a lot of micro-optimizations in PHP. Project scaffolding on a greenfield project ends up looking a LOT like Express if you use the Slim framework. And I stay away from PHP if I need concurrency (and so far, per business requirements, I haven't). I can scale it really well, and I rarely have to worry about memory limits like you do with the JVM. I'm hoping for a breath of fresh air with PHP7, because I'm not entirely sold on the current runtime alternatives - JavaScript, Python or Ruby. I've been trying Scala and I write less code than Java, but definitely more than PHP. It's also hard to jump into the Play framework if you don't grok the 'weird' operators. I also find that it's easier to hang yourself with incompatible components/libraries. So far it's fun to write though, but I don't think I've seen anyone hiring for Scala in my town.