Job ads are a particularly annoying form of lie. Someone sat down and wrote all the things they wish one of their employees knew (but that they don't want to pa

Job ads are a particularly annoying form of lie. Someone sat down and wrote all the things they wish one of their employees knew (but that they don't want to pay them to learn). It's not a very helpful source of information. Hackathons are a pretty bad source of information as well; they haven't taken the time to do any real engineering. Anyone can do a prototype in a weekend, but a prototype is not a product. Instead of worrying about the job market, be a consultant. Talk to the people who actually care about the things you're going to develop, hammer out a contract with an estimate and a nice price tag, and then deliver it. That sets up a nice feedback loop: agreement, delivery, check, repeat. Another thing to do is to specialize. The primary skill of a generalist is to learn continuously, and to learn whatever is needed to get the job done. This is a great skill, but it's a trap to only ever learn things shallowly. You need to learn at least one thing deeply so that you can become an expert in it. You'll be able to do more work in the same amount of time, while still delivering quality results. Since you'll be satisfied and motivated whenever you deliver quality work, this will go a long way to ensuring that you're satisfied and motivated all the time. Your level of security then becomes obvious, and you can stop worrying about it. For example, my own speciality is Firefox. I don't know everything there is to know about Firefox, but I know a lot. Firefox Addons, Firefox embedding, desktop apps built using Firefox, even some of the internals. I take other work too, but Firefox is what I really enjoy; the other stuff is just to fill the gaps, keep me thinking, and provide a change of pace.