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Comment by ravenstine | Hacker News Reader

I don't really understand the desire for skills to be in high demand.

Obviously, you want your skills to be in demand in some capacity.

But putting so much emphasis on whether some tech skill is a winner on a scoreboard can give people the wrong impression about other languages and technologies that appear to either be unpopular or dying. It's reassuring that Java and SQL are still in high demand after all these years, but newbies looking at these charts might make the assumption that they might as well not bother learning other things like Elixir, PHP, Rust, Ruby, etc., because they're not that popular, even though those jobs exist, will continue to exist, and pay well.

Also, it's disturbing that Scum is the 13th most demanded "skill".

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Library depth and growth are side-effects of a language ecosystems popularity.

It doesn’t mean that all libraries are good ones, but remember the open-source rallying cry “many eyes make all bugs shallow”? Yeah, that tends to be true.

Also, in-demand technologies tend to have a larger talent-pool to choose from. Not everyone is good, but you have a much better time finding the right skills and cultural fit if the talent pool is larger.

A great example counter example is elixir... A technology with a lot of advocacy but almost no demand. Slow library growth, almost no programmers with production experience, and almost no market demand... which is a self-perpetuating cycle. Choosing a technology like that for your stack is like buying an obsolete car with impossible to find parts.

This sounds horrible but maybe the people who would take these lists seriously are precisely the kinds of people who are careerist programmers. And they really just want the maximum value from their “investment” in learning programming.

In college I didn’t learn Java at all because it didn’t seem very fun. Python did and I learned that. Then Go came along which was easy to pick up. But once you know a general purpose language well, it doesn’t take long to learn another one (maybe not the most performant code right away but that’s what code reviews by peers are for).

Is there anything inherently wrong with that? They know where the butter for their bread comes from and make it work for them and reap from it.

As far as individual career choices go, seems like a winning move.

This is a good question. I think I don’t want to work with careerists. Programming is a kind of labor that seems to have different properties than other kinds of labor, which can be quantified effectively and used to make accurate predictions. The sheer complexity of the field makes promising things a fools errand. The Agile manifesto is an acknowledgment of this unpredictability, and the approach they take is to quantify only the immediate next goals instead of predicting months ahead.

Careerists tend to like predictable slices of work which they can accomplish during work hours and go home and do whatever. Unfortunately, most high impact projects require a bit more involvement: not to give up all free time, but to be more flexible. A commitment to do the right thing (very easy to cut corners and ignore best practices) but to deliver on time.

Careerists tend to prioritize their quanta of work and how to get it done during work hours rather than focusing on getting it done well. They have to be coached into best practices. They need to be asked to meet deadlines, or disagree to deadlines if they feel it’s inadequate. For these reasons, I personally do not like working with careerists.

> This sounds horrible but maybe the people who would take these lists seriously are precisely the kinds of people who are careerist programmers.

While I agree with the sentiment, I think there's a flipside to this. Certain communities cough cough ahem have the luxury of not caring at all about skills in broad demand, hopping from technology to technology because the market allows it.

I've seen a lot of "expert beginnerism" from that group of people, and a little bit of disdain for the people who do schlep work day in and day out to make a living. In my experience, a lot of the people who work with the boring technology have more seniority and depth because they're not relearning the window dressing that is syntax/framework/language constantly.

If anything, I think these reports (from Indeed... real data, not some meaningless top ten) just indicate that employers don't really care about whatever's hot right now, and that a surprising amount of the economy is powered by unglamorous tech.

Ok, well what if you picked up VBasic and Pascal instead of python and go? I would say your choices are particularly convenient.

Is that a freudian typo?

>> Scum

I don't if it was an intentional typo, but the `pun` might actually apply in many projects, unfortunately I must say.

because price ( aka salary / fee) is a function of supply and demand and it grows the more the skill is in demand. As simple as that.

Let’s say you want to start a career as a freelance for example : what skill to you put forward ? You may say « but jobs requiring elixir are probably more interesting than sql/java ». I agree, but that is if there’s one position open at the time you’re looking , in the area you’re looking and with other qualifications matching

It isn't that simple. Most "Java + SQL" jobs are run of the mill cost-center type jobs at companies that aren't tech companies. Their salaries, benefits, and locales are generally poor relatively to other software engineering jobs. The demand is high, and so is the supply of labor, but that isn't the whole picture.

I would agree with that picture. In other comments on this thread, I've indicated Java & SQL are the #1 demands on any project I've ever worked on.

At the same time though, none of those people have earned anything remotely what I tend to see on HN in general, and SF area in particular. From my limited experience, it feels like a good, experienced, hardened, senior Java developer in Toronto, Canada (not a tiny/cheap place), makes about half what a hot-startup-technology intermediate makes in SF :-\

Canada is particularly bleak in terms of SDE salary though. My offers in South Africa were higher than average salaries in Vancouver.

Tech "hubs" like the Bay Area are rare: most software developers earn far less, and our salaries shouldn't be taken for a typical salary.

The vast majority of software developers will never see six figures (adjusted for inflation) unless they move to management, just like most of their white-collar peers.

https://h1bdata.info/topjobs.php

Software engineer and senior software engineer are 100k+, among many others.

The average wealth of ten penniless homeless people and Bill Gates is in the billions.

Yep. I live in the Sacramento area. Half the salary. Half the price for a house. Half the commute.

Seems an even trade.

I thought that, too, before I had the income. Being able to max out my 401k and IRA contribution on 5% of my salary is a huge deal, and more than makes up for the difference in housing cost. I also live 5 minutes from work. People overestimate how much the COL difference really is and underestimate the significant savings advantages that come with living here.

I think you underestimate the COL difference because you are settling for inferior housing. Do you at least have a low-end house, such as 2000 square feet on a 0.25 acre lot that is all your own? Around here in the Space Coast area, that goes for $150,000. It can be done with a 5-minute commute.

Software developers get paid better than typical, so they can get fancier housing if they don't have expensive hobbies. See if you can afford the things my coworkers have gotten:

1. a house with canal access to a lake

2. a new McMansion (looked like 3000 to 6000 square feet)

3. 11 acres, building the house as desired (he got sheep and chickens for fun)

4. beach condo

5. a house with a boat dock on a large waterway leading to the ocean

I'm going to guess that at least 4 of those are impossible for you. The cost of 11 acres is particularly entertaining. I went for something a bit more modest, about 3500 square feet on 0.39 acres, but it is just 0.9 mile from work and I'm supporting a family of 14 on a single income.

We live in a 1500 square foot townhouse. It's smaller than the 2200 square foot beast we left behind near the Space Coast, in fact. But my cash salary is 3x what I was earning there, the benefits are better, the equity is a nice bonus on top of that, and the CoL is just about 2x. I save about what my net take-home used to be. I'd be saving more, but one of my kids need therapy that is quite costly and not covered by insurance.

So while I can't afford that stuff now, out here, I'm going to be in a much better position in retirement than most of your friends. And I'll be able to retire sooner.

There is no "2200 square foot beast". That is just a median home. It's a bit cramped, but adequate. Right now you could get 4400 square feet on a 1 acre lot for $400,000 in Melbourne or Palm Bay.

You CoL difference is only 2x because you are settling for inferior housing. People can do that. You have. Let's not pretend it is good housing however. To get that early retirement, you forgo decades of living in decent housing. The CoL difference is well over 10x with equivalent housing.

That housing deficiency can have an everlasting impact on your family. People in costly and cramped spaces have smaller families. You might not be aware of the effect it has on you, simply thinking that you didn't want that many kids. In retirement, it will be too late to have more kids.

He trolled you good :-)

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