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

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

#81

Post by francisofascii »

WorldMaker wrote: post #50

Scott Hanselman coined the phrase "Dark Matter Developers" nearly a decade ago (!) [1] to describe the idea that something like "99%" of developers in the world are doing stuff that is "unsexy" and "boring" and "mature" and "gets the job done" and "I can just clock out at 5pm and stop worrying about it". One of the key complaints about "Dark Matter Developers" is that you mostly don't hear from them (especially on HN…

Right, some of the smartest people I worked with was at a Microsoft shop company. These people don't have public blogs, Twitter handles, or Github repos. All their success was only known internal to the company.

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

#82

Post by golover721 »

I cannot speak so much from the C# side of things. But Azure is by some measures the fastest growing cloud right now. With some analysts projecting it will overtake AWS eventually. At my current company we utilize both AWS and Azure, but are by no means a “Microsoft stack”.

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

#83

Post by octobus2021 »

A few thoughts:

- Recruiters are basically sales people. Some (not all) will try to convince you that the stack they're specializing in is the best one in the world and the rest of technologies are almost dead (nothing personal against recruiters btw, they are people and need to put the food on the table too).

- Microsoft has a higher barrier to entry, and makes it more difficult to leave. So you won't see many 3-people startups but more established companies who've been with MSFT since Windows 95/2000.

- Cannot speak for the front-end (I'm assuming .NET/etc), I've been specializing in MSFT BI for a number of years (since pre-Azure). Definitely see that the space somewhat stagnated, new companies are not starting their BI/data analytics projects with MSFT toolset, new entrants mostly go with AWS (Amazon throws a lot of money to continuously improve it and beef up their consulting arm) and other vendors. AWS seems to better suit rapid development philosophy as in "let's get all the data we can get in one place and see what we can do with it". MSFT tools are better suited for traditional data warehousing (as in "Enterprise Data Warehouse") concept which is currently (deservedly) frowned upon. Yes I know MSFT has the Data Lake, Spark, Kafka, etc etc but they are essentially playing catch-up with AWS and all the smaller guys, while incurring higher cost for their customers.

[Edit: formatting]

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

#84

Post by srcmap »

WorldMaker wrote: post #50

Scott Hanselman coined the phrase "Dark Matter Developers" nearly a decade ago (!) [1] to describe the idea that something like "99%" of developers in the world are doing stuff that is "unsexy" and "boring" and "mature" and "gets the job done" and "I can just clock out at 5pm and stop worrying about it". One of the key complaints about "Dark Matter Developers" is that you mostly don't hear from them (especially on HN…

I search job site such indeed.com for demands of job categories. (Data driven)

Here are the returns for jobs within 25 miles of where I live (bay area.)

   Keywords       jobs
   ----------------------------
   Azure          3094
   AWS            7408
   Google Cloud   2157
   React          3829     (not cloud tech, but just curious to know.)

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

#86

Post by gregors »

I left the Microsoft ecosystem over a decade ago and it was the right choice for me. The companies that use Microsoft are not on the leading edge of technical progress.

C# is a Microsoft's Java, Azure is Microsoft's AWS, Surface is Microsoft's MacBook, Teams is Microsoft's Slack, Codeplex is Microsoft's Github - well ok I'll give them that last one they paid enough for it. But remember Github is rails.

The tech isn't bad. It can and does power anything and everything. There are some interesting fintech companies built on .NET. It's not an issue with the technology, it's an issue with the culture of the companies that use that technology.

Look at Stackoverflow - that's the epitome of an unapologetic .NET shop. I feel that the culture at Stackoverflow was extremely different than most .NET shops I've dealt with. Maybe you should find cool companies building cool things that are in your stack? Check out https://dotnet.microsoft.com/en-us/platform/customers for some ideas. If you're not finding what makes you happy, do what I did and look elsewhere. Best of luck.

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

#87

Post by blibble »

yokoprime wrote: post #67
blibble wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Why the same quote and reply with both your accounts?

it's possible that more than one person thinks that Microsoft products are less than high quality

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

#88

Post by skeeter2020 »

If you have experience using VS code to develop with containers against SQL Server and deploy to Azure with a React SPA and C# APIs no sane company is going to turn you down because you only have "Microsoft Experience". If you are a Blazor expert build sharepoint solutions that run from windows servers you'll have limited options.

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

#89

Post by semireg »

WorldMaker wrote: post #50

Scott Hanselman coined the phrase "Dark Matter Developers" nearly a decade ago (!) [1] to describe the idea that something like "99%" of developers in the world are doing stuff that is "unsexy" and "boring" and "mature" and "gets the job done" and "I can just clock out at 5pm and stop worrying about it". One of the key complaints about "Dark Matter Developers" is that you mostly don't hear from them (especially on HN…

Dark Matter Devs are a bit like people who have successfully built a life off-grid. You don’t hear from them much. Probably too busy chopping, splitting and stacking wood.

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

#90

Post by lostmsu »

ouvewb92b wrote: post #28
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…

> I don't think Microsoft stack offers a path to like, a mid-six-figure job at a major Silicon Valley tech company. Maybe at Microsoft?

Microsoft does not pay mid-six-figures. They are lagging behind monsters like Facebook and Google (but so does Apple AFAIK).
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