Sometimes you should follow the crowd. Sometimes you should forge a different path. Figuring out when to do what is both really hard and really important. As a

Sometimes you should follow the crowd. Sometimes you should forge a different path. Figuring out when to do what is both really hard and really important. As a -general- rule the things that make you different should be different. The things that support what you do should be common. For example- I need to commute. Our customers don't care what car i drive, so I choose something reliable (think Toyota not TVR). I need infrastructure to run on, to me it's a commodity, so I pick whatever is convenient. Our secret sauce is productivity. So we use tools and processes optimized for that. A lot of that is in-house, very bespoke. And we use a language you never heard of because 99% of software companies don't care about productivity. If you're an employee it makes sense to learn whatever everyone else is learning. There are lots of jobs for c# programmers. But of course the pool of c# programmers is large and ultimately you're a replaceable commodity. Whereas when you learn a skill which is unfashionable, rare, hard to master and so on, then your employment pool becomes really small, but also really valuable. For example, you can (and should) learn how to use Windows. But you're not gonna get hired for that (despite every company having it). But become a OpenBSD expert, and only 6 companies are in the market. But they pay a Lot for someone who can add value to them. Becoming an expert in someone's secret sauce pays well, and has great job security, at the cost of job mobility. Most people of course want to be in the herd. It's safe. It's easy. You eat grass. It's a good life. There's no excitement, but also no way of standing out. Some want to forge a different path. Carve out a niche. Take advantage of a gap here, an opportunity there. Go with the flow when it doesn't matter.