51–60 of 147 posts
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.
MS stacks tend to get used in companies where the final product is not software, but things and services.
2) Also not true. MS dev tools today are far better than they used to be and C# is a pleasure to write in.
That said Azure still has complexity and reliability issues. It’s getting better but I executed a one year long project on it recently and it was difficult getting permissions right plus there was a lot of unexpected complexity working with App Services.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
It would more likely lead to a six figure job at an enterprise company or consultancy. MSFT "stack" is enormous.
I don’t know how many enterprises are paying their mainstream senior engineers $400k like a Facebook or an Uber or an Airbnb does.
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)
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…
Based on my own experience, you probably don't. They tend to be legacy companies in low-growth areas and lower pay.
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…
So much so they will have you go through the job process to meet their targets or even when they know better candidates are being put forward.
They employ so many unethical tactics it's best to always check with the company directly if the role still exists.
We work with many recruitment agencies and having seen and heard what I have I no longer would take any at face value if I was on the other end.
Is MSFT stack the darling of Silicon Valley? No.
Is it used widely? Yes.
MSFT and Google had no interest in losing cloud market, so you will be fine in either ecosystem.
At 40, with no interest in management, my suggestion would be moving towards principal architect / principal software engineer roles, where you are considered the defacto company expert in X. Sounds like you have a lot of MSFT technology experience, and I have to imagine you will find work until you no longer wish to work.
Also, I would consider marketing your skillset; MSFT makes good products, and teams/companies may not be aware. I wouldn't say "Why are you using Javascript and not .NET" as that is not a wise question, but rather, show how investing in MSFT toolchains would benefit their org.
If the new kids really don't want to use it, specializing in it might be an advantage for the older crowd since we'll happily take the work if they don't want it. I work with some pretty big companies that still run .NET 2.0 based services. I think there will be work in it for a very long time.
I was actually bearish on MSFT about 10 years ago, but since Ballmer has been gone I have seen a big improvement in cloud, developer tooling and a clearly different attitude towards Linux and open source software. Very confident in .NET now.
This market is still huge. That said, the real question is what do you like building and working on? Do that. Besides, retooling isn't really all that bad, anyway and there is not an extinction event on the horizon for MS.
> no developer really wants to work with MSF tech.
Says every one about the tech they are not using in their product. There are plenty of devs that absolutely love MS stuff. What really matters is what you like working with. Do what you like to do. It makes getting up and going to work a lot easier.