There was recently some advice (on HN?) that if you really want to make money, you specialize in 2 things, not just 1, and not Jack-of-all-trades. So having a

There was recently some advice (on HN?) that if you really want to make money, you specialize in 2 things, not just 1, and not Jack-of-all-trades. So having a first career and then moving into a second one is one way to do that. Last year we hired a couple junior programmers, even though we were only aiming for 1. The second programmer impressed us so much with her code samples that we were tempted to hire her as well. But what really cinched the deal was that she had uncommon business sense and knew enough to tell us about it. She has been the best junior programmer that I've ever worked with, and I have no doubt she'll be an amazing senior programmer some day.