Ask HN: Are Microsoft development stack and Azure a dead-end career path? • Hacker News Board

Re: Ask HN: Are Microsoft development stack and Azure a dead-end career path?

#121

Post by CactusOnFire » Wed, Jan 12, 2022, 7:45 PM UTC

nostromo wrote: post #55

onion2k wrote: post #5

Azure has about 21% market share and revenue of around $15.1bn (sort of, MSFT bundle it with 'Intelligent Services' in their reporting). Someone must be using it. It clearly isn't dead. Secondly, some recruiters are liars who will tell you literally anything to try to get you to apply for jobs they're recruiting for. A recruiter saying MSFT stack is a dead-end just means they don't have many MSFT stack jobs on their…

But the question is if you want to work at the 21% of companies that use Microsoft. Based on my own experience, you probably don't. They tend to be legacy companies in low-growth areas and lower pay.

While Azure companies do tend to skew "larger enterprise", I don't think it's fair to say they are lower paying. If anything, more Azure-related jobs I have seen a higher-price point on than AWS jobs (in my local sphere). I think this is because Azure has higher demand than supply, and people are less likely to choose it as their primary cloud right out the gate.

It's also worth noting that a lot of consulting companies focus on Azure. This is because of perverse incentives, but still worth noting.

Re: Ask HN: Are Microsoft development stack and Azure a dead-end career path?

#122

Post by bob1029 » Wed, Jan 12, 2022, 7:49 PM UTC

xupybd wrote: post #112

bob1029 wrote: post #108

Azure? Maybe. I have my doubts with all things cloud in 2022. MS "development stack" (assuming .NET/C#/VS2022/AspNetCore)? Never. You can safely disregard this recruiter's advice. Presumably, it's based on some bullshit statistical survey or other meaningless waste of time. If you were to use HN submission statistics to determine which tech stack would be the best fit your business or career, you are probably going t…

I'm making the choice for a new tech stack and .NET is winning. For getting the job done reliably it's looking like the strongest contender. I'm not sure why there isn't more momentum towards using .NET.

> I'm not sure why there isn't more momentum towards using .NET.

I can't quite pinpoint it either. It used to really bother me that there wasnt some daily HN thread about how amazingly-coherent the .NET stack is.

Over time, I have grown to accept this low-key path is a major competitive advantage that I have over my peers. Being able to tolerate boring, slow-moving technology platforms also allows for more time to think about solving real problems. If the ground isn't constantly shifting out from underneath you, there is a lot more time to ponder about the actual business that you are going to build on top of it.

If I had to make a wild guess, I would say that the developer community has a bi-modal distribution, and the "shiny" mode dominates social media. The "serious business" mode is too busy to fuck off on the internet most days, so you don't hear about their wins as often.

Re: Ask HN: Are Microsoft development stack and Azure a dead-end career path?

#123

Post by kcartlidge » Wed, Jan 12, 2022, 7:53 PM UTC

xupybd wrote: post #112

bob1029 wrote: post #108

Azure? Maybe. I have my doubts with all things cloud in 2022. MS "development stack" (assuming .NET/C#/VS2022/AspNetCore)? Never. You can safely disregard this recruiter's advice. Presumably, it's based on some bullshit statistical survey or other meaningless waste of time. If you were to use HN submission statistics to determine which tech stack would be the best fit your business or career, you are probably going t…

I'm making the choice for a new tech stack and .NET is winning. For getting the job done reliably it's looking like the strongest contender. I'm not sure why there isn't more momentum towards using .NET.

> I'm not sure why there isn't more momentum towards using .NET.

I've thought about this too.

Although I've done DotNet since 2001 I'm not blind to the faults; I also do Go, Node, Ruby, Python, and PHP. What I've concluded (and I could be wrong) is that as powerful as DotNet is it is held back, understandably, by the Windows-centric nature of the original .NET Framework (ending at v4).

Unless an open-minded assessment is done, that (fair) bias means that it isn't really taken seriously outside of enterprise. Which is a shame as it is (to within a degree that makes the difference irrelevant) as productive as Rails, as powerful as Java, as performant as Go, and as easy to read (when written well) as Python or Ruby.

Coupled with the fact that it is now cross-platform with self-contained and trimmed single binaries, it really is a shame.

I still remember the first thing that got me looking at Ruby was actually Rails, and it was doing the 15 minute build-a-blog tutorials. Nowadays with EF Core, DotNet 6, Postgres, migrations, and scaffolding, it is almost as fast in DotNet. And the result is a type-safe codebase that requires massively less resources to scale.

Re: Ask HN: Are Microsoft development stack and Azure a dead-end career path?

#124

Post by ivalm » Wed, Jan 12, 2022, 7:58 PM UTC

atwebb wrote: post #23

closeparen wrote: post #20

I don't think Microsoft stack offers a path to like, a mid-six-figure job at a major Silicon Valley tech company. Nor will you me able to leverage much of the SV ecosystem if you're trying to do a startup. In that sense it could be seen as a career dead end. But there are plenty of solidly middle-class developer jobs in the IT departments of traditional companies, and a robust ecosystem of small consulting firms all…

It would more likely lead to a six figure job at an enterprise company or consultancy. MSFT "stack" is enormous.

Sure, but you are settling for sub 200k at an enterprise co vs 300-500k at a tech co.

Re: Ask HN: Are Microsoft development stack and Azure a dead-end career path?

#125

Post by kcartlidge » Wed, Jan 12, 2022, 8:01 PM UTC

blibble wrote: post #42

AdamN wrote: post #21

Reminds me of a CS professor telling me that a COBOL programmer will never go hungry ... and it's still true :-) MS stack will be high quality and used by clients with $$$ for the rest of your career. With that said, any serious non-MS shop will be happy to have your experience and so switching up stacks shouldn't be a problem either if you find a good team. I would just apply broadly and go from there.

> MS stack will be high quality I've yet to experience a MS product that I would consider to be "high quality" (including Azure)

> I've yet to experience a MS product that I would consider to be "high quality" (including Azure)

Most aren't. Some are. As with all software/ecosystem providers.

Re: Ask HN: Are Microsoft development stack and Azure a dead-end career path?

#126

Post by kcartlidge » Wed, Jan 12, 2022, 8:14 PM UTC

tw04 wrote: post #96

>1) Microsoft dev stack is really a dead-end, any new startups or even large corporations starting new initiatives are more and more are moving away from any kind of MSF tech or Azure cloud development, and 2) no developer really wants to work with MSF tech. As Amazon moves to compete directly with more and more of their customers, you'll find more and more of those customers fleeing to Microsoft and Google and IBM.…

This ^^

Re: Ask HN: Are Microsoft development stack and Azure a dead-end career path?

#127

Post by kcartlidge » Wed, Jan 12, 2022, 8:31 PM UTC

tinus_hn wrote: post #51

There’s plenty of work using the Microsoft stack of the week, just don’t be surprised when they drop todays model like a brick as they switch over to yet another new one. They probably burned people a few times too often, which is one of the reasons people rather stay away. And another one might be that it’s all ‘enterprise’ which isn’t necessarily an inspiring environment.

> Just don’t be surprised when they drop todays model like a brick as they switch over to yet another new one

This is very true from the client perspective (Silverlight? MAUI? WPF? WTF?).

From the server perspective, however, you are on solid ground.

From .NET Framework v1 (around 2000/2001?) they've stuck with and improved C# and said Framework, including spinning up the cross platform DotNet Core replacement which was largely a smooth code transition if you didn't jump too soon.

And they've been with it for 20 years. Even when they've moved on with some bits (eg ADO/ADO.Net/ODP/XSD/EF for database access) the old ways continue to run.

Re: Ask HN: Are Microsoft development stack and Azure a dead-end career path?

#128

Post by ur-whale » Wed, Jan 12, 2022, 8:39 PM UTC

onion2k wrote: post #5

Azure has about 21% market share and revenue of around $15.1bn (sort of, MSFT bundle it with 'Intelligent Services' in their reporting). Someone must be using it. It clearly isn't dead. Secondly, some recruiters are liars who will tell you literally anything to try to get you to apply for jobs they're recruiting for. A recruiter saying MSFT stack is a dead-end just means they don't have many MSFT stack jobs on their…

> some recruiters are liars who will tell you literally anything

This has been my experience as well, and on both side of the fence (as a potential hire and as a recruiting manager).

In both case, this does great harm.

Re: Ask HN: Are Microsoft development stack and Azure a dead-end career path?

#129

Post by Brian_K_White » Wed, Jan 12, 2022, 8:48 PM UTC

abernard1 wrote: post #116

vsgzusnex wrote: post #26

While I think most people will agree it's not a dead end tech stack and their will be companies hiring for decades to come there's a element of truth here that isn't being discussed. From what I can see Microsoft stack is used mostly by enterprises that are not engineering centric. For all of the largest engineering centric companies that pay top of market only one heavily uses Microsoft....and that is Microsoft. Fur…

> From what I can see Microsoft stack is used mostly by enterprises that are not engineering centric. I'm going to counter this anecdote with my anecdote. I have spent roughly half of my time in the boring world and half in the HN "sexy" tech world. 25 years of programming experience and have had immense failures and some pretty good successes. Unquestionably , the sexy tech people were—and to this day are—worse tech…

I feel like there is some true observation you've made, but I can not figure out what it is from this text.

I absolutely agree with your opening statement about the flashy new operations usually being crap engineers, but cannot follow any of the rest or see ho it supports that assertion.

Or what little I can parse, seems backwards from my own experience.

For instance, the most I hear the word "practical" is to justify doing something inefficient but safe, ie use a microsoft product or service and accept it's limitations and cost, or some other safe inefficient choice like vmware before azure was a thing, etc.

So it doesn't support the idea that it's something the ignorant kids say, OR the opposite that the better engineers say it, it's just sort of a non-sequiter or something.

Personally I've grown to hate the word even though of course one has to use it and it's a valid concept to be practical. I just see it way over used to justify predictability over goodness.

The manager types don't really care about advancing anything. They do lip service to the idea of making more money by making something more efficient, but really any change at all is worse than any promised gain. Really they would love nothing better than to just keep cranking the machine they have now exactly the same way forever. They only change by force when the machine stops producing.

Re: Ask HN: Are Microsoft development stack and Azure a dead-end career path?

#130

Post by abernard1 » Wed, Jan 12, 2022, 9:00 PM UTC

Brian_K_White wrote: post #129

abernard1 wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> From what I can see Microsoft stack is used mostly by enterprises that are not engineering centric. I'm going to counter this anecdote with my anecdote. I have spent roughly half of my time in the boring world and half in the HN "sexy" tech world. 25 years of programming experience and have had immense failures and some pretty good successes. Unquestionably , the sexy tech people were—and to this day are—worse tech…

I feel like there is some true observation you've made, but I can not figure out what it is from this text. I absolutely agree with your opening statement about the flashy new operations usually being crap engineers, but cannot follow any of the rest or see ho it supports that assertion. Or what little I can parse, seems backwards from my own experience. For instance, the most I hear the word "practical" is to justif…

> For instance, the most I hear the word "practical" is to justify doing something inefficient but safe, ie use a microsoft product or service and accept it's limitations and cost, or some other safe inefficient choice like vmware before azure was a thing, etc.

Sure, I hear you and I've experienced this too. I've been on nightmare ASP.net spaghetti code projects that would be good fodder for programming sites. VB projects that are a stitched-together set of tools with a frontend full of a million buttons, etc.

But on the flip side, have you never worked at a company full of Ruby/PHP/Python engineers that have trouble getting their software to build and run correctly? People with billions of dollars who find the prospect of putting something on a web page—for a business model that has existed for a century—challenging? I have many times, and it's a reflection of how insular that segment of the industry is that they don't find anything weird about this.

In contrast, there's an army of JVM engineers out there that don't spend any time on HN because the JVM solved the problems HN talks about 20 years ago. They don't need to talk about it or consider it "news" because it isn't. For instance, the technical level of InfoQ is whole echelons higher than here. This is not to disparage the very real benefits that the "Hacker" mentality has provided to the world. SV are accomplished business and product people, and they've managed to impress the world with the type of organizational scale they can deliver. But technical it ain't.