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Comment by sammyo | Hacker News Reader

The issue with a narrow specialty in Tech is that the lucrative niche can evaporate almost overnight.

Yes if you specialize in a specific technology. Not as much if you specialize in something more fundamental like audio DSP. you may have to jump between telephony and pro audio as the markets change, but there will always be work. And the barrier to entry is quite high.

Your working conditions and pay don't depend on how bad ass your specialty sounds, or how technically complicated the work is. They depend on the total supply of people who can do the work compared to the total amount of work that needs doing.

There's no escape for grown-up computer programmers. This thread covered the situation pretty well: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9361580

This is most obvious in front end web but the simple solution is to not be an "Angular JS specialist" but a "Front End specialist".

Right, but now you are back to square one. The solution to terrible market dynamics for grown-up programmers is to specialize. The solution to specialization risk is to become a generalist.

I guess you could repeat this until you are 40, then get a nursing degree (not easy!), and actually start your life. :)

There is "specialist" like "Angular JS expert" and there is "specialist" like "web application development". Specializing on a single product is bad, but specializing on delivering applications through web technologies (notionally a more general title) is good.

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