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Ask HN: Should I Change My Specialization Due to Market Saturation?

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Re: Ask HN: Should I Change My Specialization Due to Market Saturation?

#11

Post by sk11001 »

quickthrower2 wrote: post #8
sk11001 wrote: post #5

The overall state of the software job market is quite poor so don't expect things to be much better if you switch to mobile. In fact you should expect it to be more difficult to find a job in mobile development because your experience is less relevant.

This is where I think cloud architecture / devops is a good route. It is complementary and you wont get fired for knowing how to CI/CD and deploy your thing but you can learn it while still doing web dev. You may never need to go full time devops but it is a great “extra” going into another role especially in smaller teams. In larger companies specialising might be better for example being a performance JS expert.

It's absolutely baffling that you're presenting "knowing how to deploy your software" as a differentiating skill. It should be the bare minimum to be employable.

Re: Ask HN: Should I Change My Specialization Due to Market Saturation?

#13

Post by VirusNewbie »

Collecting specialities is important, but never think of yourself as a "front end engineer" or a "mobile developer", you're a software engineer that has happened to specialize in two previous fields.

My last three jobs I've done big data, SRE, network servers/socket programming, distributed systems, and more.

Some companies will hire you for your speciality, and others will hire you because you're good at learning a speciality, and they might have a new one they want to point you at.

Re: Ask HN: Should I Change My Specialization Due to Market Saturation?

#14

Post by kypro »

gtirloni wrote: post #10
quickthrower2 wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is where I think cloud architecture / devops is a good route. It is complementary and you wont get fired for knowing how to CI/CD and deploy your thing but you can learn it while still doing web dev. You may never need to go full time devops but it is a great “extra” going into another role especially in smaller teams. In larger companies specialising might be better for example being a performance JS expert.

Basic DevOps is easy enough to grasp and apply, especially if it's just the CI part. I'd say all developers should learn a bit of that. Actual "infrastructure engineering" (cloud or not) is a different beast. It requires much deeper knowledge and would be akin to changing professions in terms of how much time you'd have to dedicate to know enough to raise about the noise level. I've been doing this for 22+ years so I…

Out of interest what kinda of skills would say are needed to land a devops role?

I've been doing bits and pieces of as a developer for almost a decade at this point and have wondered if it's something I could move into if I needed to. I think I might have most of the basic skills – AWS, Terraform, k8s, docker, CI (Github Actions, Jenkins, CircleCI), Linux command line, scripting.

I'd guess a good knowledge of networking and security is important too, which I think I'm okay at, but that's possibly just the Dunning–Kruger effect.

Re: Ask HN: Should I Change My Specialization Due to Market Saturation?

#15

Post by jamil7 »

Mobile is tricky, people mostly transfer into it from another specialisation and you’re expected to have a pretty deep knowledge of whichever platform you pick. If you go the Flutter/React Native route you’ll need experience on both and language experience in multiple languages.

Competition is less and saturation is less than web but there’s also far fewer jobs.

I’d second what others have said and hone your backend experience further and expand into devops.

Re: Ask HN: Should I Change My Specialization Due to Market Saturation?

#16

Post by quickthrower2 »

sk11001 wrote: post #11
quickthrower2 wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is where I think cloud architecture / devops is a good route. It is complementary and you wont get fired for knowing how to CI/CD and deploy your thing but you can learn it while still doing web dev. You may never need to go full time devops but it is a great “extra” going into another role especially in smaller teams. In larger companies specialising might be better for example being a performance JS expert.

It's absolutely baffling that you're presenting "knowing how to deploy your software" as a differentiating skill. It should be the bare minimum to be employable.

Well that is just one aspect of Devops and CI/CD is definitely an art unto itself. I think there are a lot of developers who have never set up something from scratch like that for more than a toy.

Re: Ask HN: Should I Change My Specialization Due to Market Saturation?

#18

Post by SlowBr0 »

VirusNewbie wrote: post #13

Collecting specialities is important, but never think of yourself as a "front end engineer" or a "mobile developer", you're a software engineer that has happened to specialize in two previous fields. My last three jobs I've done big data, SRE, network servers/socket programming, distributed systems, and more. Some companies will hire you for your speciality, and others will hire you because you're good at learning a…

I am in fact facing a similar question as the OP. I have done Full Stack in the past but lately I have been focusing/specializing more on the backend. Currently I have an offer for Full Stack role, it pays better than the actual company where I am at but I worry if going back to full stack again it would hurt my career in the long run. I am afraid to fall into the jack of all trades but master of none role. Other thing that I am not sure is the tech stack, the role is for a react - ruby stack. Although I am of the opinion of what matters is focusing in the concepts and the fundamentals of programming where those can be applied to most of the languages, but I’m not sure if adding one more language to my toolset would be the best,since I am currently focusing in java/kotlin and golang .. what is your take on this? Am I overthinking this? (Not trying to hijack the OP question, just thought that would fit into the same topic)

Re: Ask HN: Should I Change My Specialization Due to Market Saturation?

#20

Post by muzani »

GoldenMonkey wrote: post #19

If you do go the mobile route. Android development has more demand. Apple has a lot of developers, android not so much.

It depends where. I used to do Android training in Malaysia. There's substantially more Android devs here, because colleges don't have the budget to do iOS training and many people can't afford a Macbook. iOS jobs would pay about 30% more for the same work or less.

So people would switch from Android to iOS because of the pay if they could.

At senior levels, Android tends to pay better because there's lots of really niche knowledge, especially around the differences between Xiaomi/Samsung/custom devices as well as how locale/currency is handled. I just wrote a 1000 character essay complaining about the differences, but it's besides the point.

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