Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Ask HN: What skillsets/stacks will keep me employable over the next 5-10 years?

news.ycombinator.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

61–70 of 81 posts

Re: Ask HN: What skillsets/stacks will keep me employable over the next 5-10 years?

#61

Post by sgarland »

sharadov wrote: post #55
sgarland wrote: post #48

Databases. SQL isn’t going anywhere, and neither is Postgres. Plus the various NoSQL offerings. DBA has been reinvented as DBRE. It’s essentially still the same job, except you also have to know how to wrestle YAML, HA/DR, and create meaningful SLIs / SLOs. But if you like getting your hands dirty with the internals of DBs, hoo boy are there jobs. My last interview run, I had a 50% callback rate (n=10), plus some ext…

Most companies have managed dbs, and they don't hire a DBRE/DBOps person until it's too late. But I agree there are jobs and not many people with the skills.

> they don't hire a DBRE/DBOps person until it's too late

My pet theory for the explosion of jobs in this space is that during ZIRP, tons of companies underwent huge growth (generally without a DB team, as you said), and managed by just upsizing instance classes. Eventually, you can’t solve your problem by throwing money at a vendor.

Re: Ask HN: What skillsets/stacks will keep me employable over the next 5-10 years?

#62

Post by r2_pilot »

UncleOxidant wrote: post #49
r2_pilot wrote: post #2

Switch careers and take a job with outdoors recreation stuff. It'll last you at least 5 years and is at least partially resistant to AI and robots.

If you're going to switch careers (and it might not be a bad idea) why switch to something where there aren't a lot of jobs? I doubt there are a lot of outdoor recreation jobs - sure, there are going to be some, but it seems like a small niche and very geographically-specific. If I was still in my 30s or younger I'd probably look into becoming an electrician or a plumber - the pay is good, lots of demand as older gen…

The reason I didn't suggest those is because of the rapid advancements in AI and robotics, I think within about 5 years a good chunk of that could be automated or people with minimal training could use augmented reality to do it themselves. But hey, I've already taken my lumps here

Re: Ask HN: What skillsets/stacks will keep me employable over the next 5-10 years?

#63

Post by p1esk »

svachalek wrote: post #38
p1esk wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Got any evidence to support your statement?

I am a manager/engineer for one of the largest tech companies. Skills I am often asked to interview for are often in the direction of teamwork and relationship building. Promotion criteria are also strongly aligned in this direction. The ability of someone to get anything significant done sitting alone with their headphones on at a scale like this is practically nil. I think with generative AI things will continue to…

I’m also 30 years into my career. I love collaborating. Yet at progress update meetings my boss wants to know not how much I “collaborated”, not how busy I was, not what problems I solved. He wants to see results, especially results that make him look good.

Re: Ask HN: What skillsets/stacks will keep me employable over the next 5-10 years?

#64

Post by Balgair »

Get good at people skills and management as you age.

A good manager is worth a lot to a company. It's a subtle art, and one that doesn't really scale all that well. But it's a very valuable one.

General people skills and emotion management are also very valuable and not easy to deal with.

Re: Ask HN: What skillsets/stacks will keep me employable over the next 5-10 years?

#65

Post by beryilma »

> Yes, I know it’s good to be a generalist, and I am, but employers seem to prefer to hire “experts” in particular domains.

Who says so? Being a generalist is the worst thing to do. The world is full generalist software engineers who are ready to take your job. Being a framework monkey doesn't work either in the long term; it is so exhausting.

Being just a software engineer is not sufficient. I think without having a unique specialty, which is hard to replace, you would be just another cog in the machine.

Understanding a domain (finance, healthcare, embedded devices, etc.) in addition to being a developer is one way to make yourself indispensable, which is something a lot of developers lack.

The same thing happened to "data scientists", but faster. Throwing a data scientist to a big data problem without them knowing nothing about the field resulted in bunch of stupid "solutions". The focus on AI is an outcome of that, because very few people actually understand their domain, so we throw AI to everything in the hope that something will work. This might work for employment opportunities in the short term until something shinier comes along.

Re: Ask HN: What skillsets/stacks will keep me employable over the next 5-10 years?

#68

Post by moomoo11 »

unsupp0rted wrote: post #30
moomoo11 wrote: post #21

Creativity 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 I…

well if you’re a problem solver and creative you can figure those out pretty easily. Anyway yeah I guess if you want specific skills you could just learn whatever is in demand and get the job.

Re: Ask HN: What skillsets/stacks will keep me employable over the next 5-10 years?

#69

Post by disambiguation »

In addition to employable skills, also improve your personal finance skills.

Balance your budget, have a healthy safety net of savings, investments, develop good spending habits, no high interest debt, live frugally, etc.

Nothing is certain, you might find yourself out of work at anytime for an unknown period of time. It's hard to anticipate the market, but you can always re-skill to adapt to the changing market. That's easier to do if you have a stable and secure financial foundation.

Re: Ask HN: What skillsets/stacks will keep me employable over the next 5-10 years?

#70

Post by mindcrime »

pseudocomposer wrote: post #36
talkingtab wrote: post #25

Your 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…

I’ve actually built and AGPLed my side gig, which correlates pretty closely to what you described here: https://github.com/JonLatane/jonline Personal/Demo server (links to/includes data from the other two servers automatically): https://jonline.io Servers for Durham, NC and Raleigh, NC (link to each other only): https://bullcity.social and https://oakcity.social But um… how make money with it? I’m paying $60/mo for t…

No Chapel Hill?

I feel excluded. :-(

Post reply on HN