Ask HN: Which tech skill would you pick, if your goal is to maximize earnings? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Which tech skill would you pick, if your goal is to maximize earnings?

4 pointsthrowaway30512 comments

Let us ignore management roles. Let us also assume equal soft skills and equivalent expertise (meaning, a wordpress developer is as good at wordpress as a GoLang developer is at Golang). Same for domain knowledge.

Given everything else is equal, what tech skill would you pick to earn the maximum? Both as a freelancer and as a full time employee?

In other words, what skill has paid you the most?

I am asking because I am sick of being poor and of doing the same CRUD apps over and over again. I am experimenting with a few skillsets to pick from - being interested in the skillset is obviously the first item on the list, closely followed by the pay.

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Become an expert COBOL programmer.

You will always be able to find paying work until you die, and it will only pay more over time as supply decreases (programmers die) but demand doesn't decrease at the same rate.

It's not sexy, but if you're looking to maximize earnings with the least amount of risk that the effort expended developing the skill loses its value over time, this is the way.

I started in the mainframe COBOL world, and I've added COBOL search terms to job listing searches. Compensation is ridiculously low (I mean ~50K in SV itself).

I wouldn't look for COBOL gigs in SV. I would look in places where keeping up with the technological Joneses isn't part of the culture.

I live in New Jersey. NJ and NY has a considerable amount of COBOL deployed, in banking, insurance, payroll, etc., and especially by government organizations.

Compensation is still on the lower end, like $90k-120k/year, vs. $160k-200k for more modern tech jobs, but the competition for those jobs is almost certainly to be lower/less competitive, you're less likely to be laid off if you're even remotely competent and don't do something stupid like break the law.

To OP's original point, if you're looking for a non-management role and want to maximize your earning potential while simultaneously minimizing your employment churn risk, being a competent COBOL programmer earning $90-120k/year comfortably definitely fits the bill.

Of course, if OP's statement that they are "sick [...] of doing the same CRUD apps over and over again" then COBOL may not be a good fit: you certainly aren't going to be doing much in the way of innovating when supporting a legacy COBOL application, but you should be able to carve out a very consistent work schedule, find some decent work-life balance, and enjoy perpetual employment as long as you desire it.

> Compensation is still on the lower end, like $90k-120k/year

Is this working for the government directly or as some sort of subcontractor? For the former that’s actually surprisingly a lot.

You have be a consultant with 20 years prior experience with mainframe systems when they were the big thing to make any decent money, otherwise plenty of highly consecutive non tech firms are happy to place someone in a role for $50-$60k.

At least that’s what I hear.

Interesting, I had no idea COBOL was this valuable.

How does one show proficiency to a prospective employer though? I am going to do some reading on COBOL. Thank you

This article is now a bit dated, but:

https://www.cnn.com/2020/04/08/business/coronavirus-cobol-pr...

"Despite a dwindling number of COBOL programmers, a 2017 report by Reuters found that there are still 220 billion lines of COBOL in use today. 43% of banking systems are built on COBOL and 95% percent of ATM swipes rely on COBOL code."

How does one show proficiency? As much as I dislike certifications, I think this is one place where earning a certification that demonstrates competency from a reputable certifying body, in lieu of verifiable employment history demonstrating experience, would be worthwhile.

I would look to see what certifications IBM offers, for example.

https://www.ibm.com/blogs/ibm-training/free-course-announcin...

I’m always really wary about stuff like this. Is IBM hiring mainframe guys who complete their courses? It seems very cursory just glancing at it, and while I bet I’d definitely feel more comfortable in a mainframe environment, I have my doubts it’s going to get me to speed enough to jump into real world production stuff.

dev ops or on metal stuff

what do you mean by metal stuff? Like hardware?

Non-cloud servers. With cloud (virtual servers) you don't have to deal with for examples harddrives, network cards because that is all abstracted away. It's a different set of knowledge required.

like industrial applications maybe some refer to as old school. IoT, mainframe, hardware, kernal, OS's, that kind of on metal I guess web is a chop shop kinda always has been. There is a ginormous world of software that isnt web!!!

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