I think "specialize in something" is terrible advice for a junior but great advice for people with 10+ years experience. If you're an ambitious junior I do thi

I think "specialize in something" is terrible advice for a junior but great advice for people with 10+ years experience. If you're an ambitious junior I do think it's best to job hop as much as you can within reason, like every 6-18 months. Partly due to salary increases, yes, but even more importantly, you learn from having experiences at different companies. No two companies are alike, and working your whole career at one company, even if it's an ostensibly good one i.e. FAANG, limits your exposure. I've seen lifelong FAANG coders who tried to join a smaller startup/scale-up and fall flat because they couldn't adjust. Obviously, job hopping is much harder in the current market, but places are hiring, so it's still worth trying. For seniors though, eventually the value you provide as "just" a senior developer caps out. A software developer with 10 years experience provides a lot of value over a developer of 1-2 years of experience that justifies a significant difference in pay, but does a 20 YoE dev provide a lot more than 10 YoE? In a general "senior developer" role, I don't think so. For specialized roles, though, you can have a lot more influence, provide a lot more value, and yes, command a better salary. Unless you move into tech management, specialization is how you can keep progressing once you've acquired the requisite technical chops.