Creativity and problem solving. I think those get someone really far (and way further than others), no matter what stack or other "specific" skills.
Ask HN: What skillsets/stacks will keep me employable over the next 5-10 years?
21–30 of 81 posts
Re: Ask HN: What skillsets/stacks will keep me employable over the next 5-10 years?
#22Soft skills and deep knowledge of the fundamentals. Also, this gets asked all the time, so be sure to use HN search. https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=pastYear&page=0&prefix=tru...
Possessing a deep understanding of the fundamentals is more crucial today than ever. Additionally, focus on acquiring skills beyond the conventional office tasks, such as rolling an orange on a keyboard in a cubicle.
> such as rolling an orange on a keyboard in a cubicle
Re: Ask HN: What skillsets/stacks will keep me employable over the next 5-10 years?
#23Security, sec ops.
Infosec can be a good grift.
Re: Ask HN: What skillsets/stacks will keep me employable over the next 5-10 years?
#24[deleted]
Re: Ask HN: What skillsets/stacks will keep me employable over the next 5-10 years?
#25Your question is wrong. Your goal should not to be employable, 'get gigs'. We live in a time where the job market is shrinking, jobs are fewer, more applicants, lower wages, etc.
If you rely on employers for your livelihood you are buying a lottery ticket where the payout is smaller and less frequent. If you are a "follower" you have no choice. But if you can think your way out of a paper bag use that skill and start doing it.
Companies are in no-risk mode to a very large extent. They are very safety oriented. Perhaps Dinosaur Mode is the correct term. They hire followers, they are run by followers. So start finding obvious stupidities and fix them. We are so used to doing things the normal way that we no longer even pay attention to what we are doing.
I'm not saying quit your day job (if you have one) I am saying start a side gig. Start your side gig. And a hint if you need one - There are two very very big things missing from the internet. One is trust. The other is the ability for common people to form communities. Not follow people, but collectively think and work together. Read all the comment about why we don't and can't have these. Then go the other direction. :-)
So specific advice. Focus on you ability to be effective at accomplishing things. Any technology that lets you build your side gig. And if you can't find the technology to do that, then maybe that is your side gig.
Re: Ask HN: What skillsets/stacks will keep me employable over the next 5-10 years?
#26To ensure employment either be a specialist (so you can do something others can't), or choose an older technology that used to be popular but isn't now. Most developers will have moved on, and now you can do the thing others don't want to learn anymore. Is it glamorous? Does it pay top dollar? No and no, but it is a very secure income. I'm not suggesting you start doing COBOL. Think more along the line of Java, which…
All of the Eastern European IT diaspora folks in recent years are hardcore Java guys, I find.
The Western world should have no shortage of Java experts for the foreseeable future.
Re: Ask HN: What skillsets/stacks will keep me employable over the next 5-10 years?
#27Based on how poorly gpt-4 understands rust borrowing rules, I’d say Rust.
(This is a joke)
Re: Ask HN: What skillsets/stacks will keep me employable over the next 5-10 years?
#28- The ability and want to learn. I offer the following advice to every firefighter I teach: the day you think or believe you know everything, is the day you quit. (I'm a software dev. by trade with fifteen-odd years experience as an operational firefighter (and still am to this day)). - Find a domain or two you have an interest (better yet, a passion) in, that isn't IT, and pair your IT skills to it. My day job is (m…
Firefighters now days are closer to problem-solvers than they are firefighters. We just happen to respond to emergency calls too.
I often joke that if a UFO landed in the middle of I-40 outside of Raleigh, the first agency dispatched would be the Fire Department. We're[1] sort of the fallback "do it all" agency that goes to the crazy shit nobody else knows how to handle.
Grass fire? Send the fire department. Car crashed into a building? Send the fire department? Person locked in the police station / courthouse after hours? Send the fire department (taken from an actual incident I overheard last night while monitoring Fire/EMS dispatch in my area). Cow trapped in a ravine? Send the fire department. Apartment flooding? Send the fire department. Mysterious smell in the area? Send the fire department. UFOs? Send the fire department. And so on and on and on...
"All hazards" really is the name of the game these days.
[1]: I say "we" out of habit, even though I'm not on an active roster anywhere at the moment. I mostly gave up firefighting due to the demands of my day job, but I still consider myself a firefighter at heart and may well join up with a volunteer department again some day.
Re: Ask HN: What skillsets/stacks will keep me employable over the next 5-10 years?
#29Don’t learn frameworks, learn languages.
If you are a good C, python, or JavaScript[1] developer you will have work for the rest of time.
[1]: it is hazardously easy to end up as a framework programmer in JavaScript. If you are working in JavaScript I would strongly encourage you to learn one of the other two if you want to stay relevant for more than a few years.
Re: Ask HN: What skillsets/stacks will keep me employable over the next 5-10 years?
#30Creativity and problem solving. I think those get someone really far (and way further than others), no matter what stack or other "specific" skills.
Creativity and problem solving isn't a skillset/stack that would help keep OP employable.
Every single hacker is a creative problem solver.
OP: I don't know what specific skillset/stack will pay $$$ in 10 years.
But it wouldn't hurt to be good at:
1) Gluing together admin dashboards / SaaS
2) Getting very good sales/marketing
3) developing an audience
4) UX- the kind where customers don't take one look and run away
If you can do all those things, then whatever stack people are using at the time, or whatever entrepreneurs are selling at the time, you'll have the skills to add value and make money.