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Comment by cjbos | Hacker News Reader

Seems to be a major shift occurring in required skill set which does not help when you are trying to move from a Senior role to Senior role.

At least in my experience in the NJ/NY region, I have been looking for Flex/AS3 work for a few months, and have not seen a single interesting role advertised.

Personally it's quite daunting to make the 4th major shift in my career. Started out in classic ASP/COM, moved to Java when Microsoft introduced .NET, moved to Flash/AS3 about 4-5 years ago developing web video solutions.

Now I don't know where to start retooling, should I work in Mobile, or move back to web backend, or web frontend work... or a mixture of all three. Also after 15 years it's hard to take that pay cut and start back at zero again.

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There are some technologies that are practically guaranteed to be good investments, like becoming expert in JavaScript. You can use JavaScript on both the frontend and backend, for example.

Expect to always be retooling. Embrace it, in fact. I made a switch in my career from being an employee to being a freelance web developer. That forces me to always stay on top of things. I also think of myself as "that guy who can build you a web app" instead of a frontend or backend guy. As a consequence, I've learned frontend stuff, backend stuff, design, business dev, anything needed to get the job done.

I think it's a sign of a healthy economy that puts pressure on workers to always be updating their skills. An economy that has workers who can adapt quickly to changes in demand naturally reduces unemployment.

The others might be fine but I'd advise against moving to web frontend unless you're really interested in that. Senior web frontend positions are pretty much non-existent and from what I can tell those guy don't get anywhere near as much respect or pay as other programming positions.

> Senior web frontend positions are pretty much non-existent and from what I can tell those guy don't get anywhere near as much respect or pay as other programming positions.

Depends on the industry/area. In SFBay a talented javascripter can command as much as a talented Rubyist if you are willing to work at a startup. Bonus points if you also have a graphic design or UX chops.

The move from AS to JS is also not going to be as big a jump. Further, if you are taking a pay cut to shift stacks then I would suggest that you are getting in on new stacks too late.

I agree front-end guys don't get a lot of respect compared to the back-end guys. However, most of the back-end guys I know still think coding in tables is the way to go.

The thing you have to remember is supply and demand. Companies will pay you when supply is low, since they are in need of good talent. If you're a good negotiator - like myself, you can write your own ticket.

It's the nature of that kind of work. I blogged about this phenomenon a little while ago: http://gaiustech.wordpress.com/2011/06/13/jack-of-all-trades...

Nice post, definitely got me thinking about where I need to go next

Link your previous stacks with new stacks. If you knew C/C++ very well, it will definitely help you when you work on iPhone Objective-C work. Your work with C#/COM will help you with WP7 dev work, etc. A guy who can do front and back end well is also valuable too. Play your experience in older stacks to your advantage to show your versatility.

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