> being productive and teaching myself You can learn Kafka, Map Reduce, Elixir, DynamoDB and shiny new JS framework X like Meteor or whatever, or you can just

> being productive and teaching myself You can learn Kafka, Map Reduce, Elixir, DynamoDB and shiny new JS framework X like Meteor or whatever, or you can just go deeper on the fundamentals and the traditional tech you already know (learning SQL to a deeper level, becoming really good in Java/.NET/PHP/vanilla JS etc etc). I think the job market has room for both; and to me the second path is more enjoyable and sustainable but to each his own.