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I think jumping on new tech and marketing yourself is a good decision for a developer as its a good way to increase their compensation and market value. If you'

I think jumping on new tech and marketing yourself is a good decision for a developer as its a good way to increase their compensation and market value. If you're a developer stuck maintaining a Java spring app at some unknown company the best way to make a shift is to pick up Go or something and move to a startup. Else your career will stagnate. The best way to get promoted at many companies is to write a framework. The best way to get noticed is to write an open source framework. And so on.

xena 7y ago
Stagnate by what standard though? There is a certain joy in just maintaining the status quo.
- oblio 7y ago
  By financial standards :-)
- dragonwriter 7y ago
  > Stagnate by what standard though? Range of employment options. Possibly salary, though that's more variable. There are some jobs keeping the lights on with legacy tech long after it is done being the hot thing, but typically with any particular stack it's a shrinking numbwrt of jobs often with shrinking average real pay unless it hits a phase where the decline in people able to do it exceeds the decline in work. If you are riding out the last few years of your tech-focussed career (whether that's before retirement or before moving out of hands-on tech into, e.g., management) that's maybe not so bad, but if you planning being in tech for a longer period it's potentially extremely career-limiting not to adapt to current market focus.
  - madhadron 7y ago
    > Range of employment options. Possibly salary, though that's more variable. I'm not sure this is true. Most of the shops I've been in don't care about whether you know this or that language or library. You're expected to learn that as you need to. Most of what I've seen cut people from interview loops is missing fundamentals.
    - Shadowjack 7y ago
      From a programming perspective, possibly. As an Ops Engineer, I'm having a hard time shifting jobs. Where I work now, it's heavily siloed so I can't shift into a CI/CD team because it's a different team or the Product Engineering team because they don't do Unix administration, automation, or Kubernetes (other than the deployment aspect). I focus on automation with shell scripts and Ansible plus Tower to get Infrastructure as Code going. I took on the Kubernetes role, and am the single point of failure for the 24 clusters I manage. And now management is asking what support contracts we have for Kubernetes (me, it's just me and asking questions in various places on the 'net). Add in that I'm taking courses for the CI/CD toolset and implementing them on my homelab. But I still can't get a bite on shifting jobs.
  - jacques_chester 7y ago
    > Range of employment options. Then you'd be wise to stick stuff like Java or .NET, because there are probably millions of jobs requiring them.
twic 7y ago
Is this really true? There are plenty of job openings for people who are good at maintaining Java Spring apps!
- vonmoltke 7y ago
  They also pay a fraction of what the jobs "hip" companies pay, and often come along with developers Being treated as second-class citizens.
  - thewarrior 7y ago
    Yes exactly my point. Go lookup salaries.
  - cutler 7y ago
    Not according to itjobswatch.co.uk where Java/Spring roles fetch top rates. Same with Indeed.co.uk so which job market are you referring to?
    - thewarrior 7y ago
      It’s not so simple. For eg if your skill set is in demand you can easily trade up to a better company than if it wasn’t. This is true in my own career. Also the bar to entry would be lower. So for this reason if you’re breaking in right now learning React is better than learning Spring.
  - asdfman123 7y ago
    Is that true, or are you inadvertently comparing the cost of living between SF and other major cities? Hip technologies are being used in SV, and they have to pay tons of money just to keep the talent pool large and circulating. Older technologies are used in other cities, and there the market forces aren't so crazy. But a good Java dev can make plenty of money in SV, and a Go developer will make a competitive salary by Dallas standards but not by SV standards (and probably have a harder time finding a new job).
    - 7y ago
cloverich 7y ago
Java will be around forever, and becoming an excellent Java developer will absolutely remain highly lucrative for a very long time. That's its reputation at the companies I"ve worked for over the last 10 years (all startups). Go is more of an anti-language imho. Among myself and similarly minded colleagues, I would say its main attraction is its lack of features and it seems a haven for people that are grumpy like me. I always get a chuckle when I see it framed as "hip" because its just never felt like that to me. Elixir is Hip. Rust is somehow Hip. Go, just not in my experience.

xena 7y ago

Stagnate by what standard though? There is a certain joy in just maintaining the status quo.

oblio 7y ago
By financial standards :-)
dragonwriter 7y ago
> Stagnate by what standard though? Range of employment options. Possibly salary, though that's more variable. There are some jobs keeping the lights on with legacy tech long after it is done being the hot thing, but typically with any particular stack it's a shrinking numbwrt of jobs often with shrinking average real pay unless it hits a phase where the decline in people able to do it exceeds the decline in work. If you are riding out the last few years of your tech-focussed career (whether that's before retirement or before moving out of hands-on tech into, e.g., management) that's maybe not so bad, but if you planning being in tech for a longer period it's potentially extremely career-limiting not to adapt to current market focus.
- madhadron 7y ago
  > Range of employment options. Possibly salary, though that's more variable. I'm not sure this is true. Most of the shops I've been in don't care about whether you know this or that language or library. You're expected to learn that as you need to. Most of what I've seen cut people from interview loops is missing fundamentals.
  - Shadowjack 7y ago
    From a programming perspective, possibly. As an Ops Engineer, I'm having a hard time shifting jobs. Where I work now, it's heavily siloed so I can't shift into a CI/CD team because it's a different team or the Product Engineering team because they don't do Unix administration, automation, or Kubernetes (other than the deployment aspect). I focus on automation with shell scripts and Ansible plus Tower to get Infrastructure as Code going. I took on the Kubernetes role, and am the single point of failure for the 24 clusters I manage. And now management is asking what support contracts we have for Kubernetes (me, it's just me and asking questions in various places on the 'net). Add in that I'm taking courses for the CI/CD toolset and implementing them on my homelab. But I still can't get a bite on shifting jobs.
- jacques_chester 7y ago
  > Range of employment options. Then you'd be wise to stick stuff like Java or .NET, because there are probably millions of jobs requiring them.

twic 7y ago

Is this really true? There are plenty of job openings for people who are good at maintaining Java Spring apps!

vonmoltke 7y ago
They also pay a fraction of what the jobs "hip" companies pay, and often come along with developers Being treated as second-class citizens.
- thewarrior 7y ago
  Yes exactly my point. Go lookup salaries.
- cutler 7y ago
  Not according to itjobswatch.co.uk where Java/Spring roles fetch top rates. Same with Indeed.co.uk so which job market are you referring to?
  - thewarrior 7y ago
    It’s not so simple. For eg if your skill set is in demand you can easily trade up to a better company than if it wasn’t. This is true in my own career. Also the bar to entry would be lower. So for this reason if you’re breaking in right now learning React is better than learning Spring.
- asdfman123 7y ago
  Is that true, or are you inadvertently comparing the cost of living between SF and other major cities? Hip technologies are being used in SV, and they have to pay tons of money just to keep the talent pool large and circulating. Older technologies are used in other cities, and there the market forces aren't so crazy. But a good Java dev can make plenty of money in SV, and a Go developer will make a competitive salary by Dallas standards but not by SV standards (and probably have a harder time finding a new job).
  - 7y ago

cloverich 7y ago

Java will be around forever, and becoming an excellent Java developer will absolutely remain highly lucrative for a very long time. That's its reputation at the companies I"ve worked for over the last 10 years (all startups). Go is more of an anti-language imho. Among myself and similarly minded colleagues, I would say its main attraction is its lack of features and it seems a haven for people that are grumpy like me. I always get a chuckle when I see it framed as "hip" because its just never felt like that to me. Elixir is Hip. Rust is somehow Hip. Go, just not in my experience.