Please Do Not Be a One Trick Pony
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Please Do Not Be a One Trick Pony
1–10 of 102 posts
Re: Please Do Not Be a One Trick Pony
#2I was actually speaking with a a friend and tech recruiter about this yesterday. He mentioned that actually, being a "One Trick Pony" is pretty good for people looking to contract.
Obviously he didn't mean simply knowing one language or framework and no others whatsoever but rather that for contract work companies are looking for people that are highly specialized to come in for a very short period of time.
A Full-Stack Super Ninja Developer is still a good thing to have on payroll but you're going to need some temporary guys that know one part of your stack inside out, especially at scale.
Re: Please Do Not Be a One Trick Pony
#3They said that for the mainframe and mini people at the end of the 90s and yet all the people who I know who worked in those areas are still employed, still making good money, and will still be doing so for the foreseeable future.
Technology lasts a surprisingly long time and not everybody needs to keep jumping on the new hotness.
Re: Please Do Not Be a One Trick Pony
#4I was actually speaking with a a friend and tech recruiter about this yesterday. He mentioned that actually, being a "One Trick Pony" is pretty good for people looking to contract. Obviously he didn't mean simply knowing one language or framework and no others whatsoever but rather that for contract work companies are looking for people that are highly specialized to come in for a very short period of time. A Full-St…
It's great when companies find someone who solves their exact problem, it sucks when you're the guy who can only solve one problem though.
Especially when someone finds a way to automate a solution.
I think Valve described the 'T' employee: know one area very deeply and a broad range of others reasonably well. Seems to be a good approach :)
Maybe another way of looking at what your friend said is to just be specific about your skills/experience when job seeking?
Re: Please Do Not Be a One Trick Pony
#5I was actually speaking with a a friend and tech recruiter about this yesterday. He mentioned that actually, being a "One Trick Pony" is pretty good for people looking to contract. Obviously he didn't mean simply knowing one language or framework and no others whatsoever but rather that for contract work companies are looking for people that are highly specialized to come in for a very short period of time. A Full-St…
It's great when companies find someone who solves their exact problem, it sucks when you're the guy who can only solve one problem though. Especially when someone finds a way to automate a solution. I think Valve described the 'T' employee: know one area very deeply and a broad range of others reasonably well. Seems to be a good approach :) Maybe another way of looking at what your friend said is to just be specific…
Re: Please Do Not Be a One Trick Pony
#6Why bother learning another language that is almost the same, like PHP and Ruby? In both you need to keep up with lots of dependencies and practices that keep popping up, and it's a waste of time doing it for both in parallel. I'd say it's better to focus on one language, and if it becomes obsolete I don't see why you couldn't just dedicate a week to master the other one. And anyway I don't see how one of those languages could become obsolete without the other one also becoming obsolete, unless their development stopped for some reason.
Re: Please Do Not Be a One Trick Pony
#7They said that for the mainframe and mini people at the end of the 90s and yet all the people who I know who worked in those areas are still employed, still making good money, and will still be doing so for the foreseeable future. Technology lasts a surprisingly long time and not everybody needs to keep jumping on the new hotness.
Yeap. The highest earning programmer I know is still writing COBOL for the same employer, as he has for the last thirty years.
Staying still can be fine, if you know what do bet on. A fast moving target like HTML is just not a good bet. Get on board of a tech entrenched in the enterprise world and you can probably make a good living for many years to come.
Re: Please Do Not Be a One Trick Pony
#8Why bother learning another language that is almost the same, like PHP and Ruby? In both you need to keep up with lots of dependencies and practices that keep popping up, and it's a waste of time doing it for both in parallel. I'd say it's better to focus on one language, and if it becomes obsolete I don't see why you couldn't just dedicate a week to master the other one. And anyway I don't see how one of those langu…
Why bother learning another language that is almost the same, like PHP and Ruby?
Well, OP did say you should learn a "technology as far removed as the one that you are currently using as you can stomach." Some people can only stomach so much.
Re: Please Do Not Be a One Trick Pony
#9I was actually speaking with a a friend and tech recruiter about this yesterday. He mentioned that actually, being a "One Trick Pony" is pretty good for people looking to contract. Obviously he didn't mean simply knowing one language or framework and no others whatsoever but rather that for contract work companies are looking for people that are highly specialized to come in for a very short period of time. A Full-St…
I've been a contractor for roughly a decade now and I can say that it's much better to be a generalist than a specialist. My personal skillset ranges from hard real-time embedded/bare metal work through desktop systems, GUIs and server side stuff with higher level languages. Even been learning some Clojure...
I've never been without work in ten years and have always gone from one job to the next.
In comparison, I know people who know only one area and they are a quite regularly 'between contracts'...
Re: Please Do Not Be a One Trick Pony
#10They said that for the mainframe and mini people at the end of the 90s and yet all the people who I know who worked in those areas are still employed, still making good money, and will still be doing so for the foreseeable future. Technology lasts a surprisingly long time and not everybody needs to keep jumping on the new hotness.
I visited a workshop a few weeks ago, and also attending was a COBOL programmer (in his 50s) who still was active on that platform.
I wonder whether it could be lucrative to learn COBOL (and CICS!) and work on those legacy systems that are still out there.
"While CICS has its highest profile among financial institutions such as banks and insurance companies, over 90 percent of Fortune 500 companies are reported to run CICS along with many government entities." - Wikipedia